Year: 2017

One Company – Multi Customer Channels

Posted on by David Dinh

When someone mentions a retail store, you’ll most probably imagine a building, amidst a crowd of parked cars. A clear picture of aisles and aisles of different products will cross your mind. And then you would also imagine some of the other shoppers you’re likely to meet there. This might ring true for many people but even if you enjoy experiencing the oddity of everyday life, who has the time for such nonsense? After a busy day at work, the last thing you’d want to do is stand in a queue at the retail store, just to buy a 1L of milk. Retail stores identified the ‘need for speed’ and thus, the multi-channel strategies were formed.

Related: How to Turn Your Company into a Multi-Channel Success

Woolworths – The Fresh Food People

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Woolworths is one such retail store in Australia, who has adopted multi-channel strategies to serve their customers better. They opened their first store in Sydney, in 1924 and soon afterwards, gained the popularity that have made them one of the leading retail stores in Australia. By revenue, they come on the 2nd place, after Wesfarmers.With over 3000 stores across Australia and New Zealand, the team at Woolworths soon realised that the traditional brick-and-mortar store strategy wouldn’t be able to satisfy their customer needs and so in 2011, they took the initiative to become the country’s leading multi-channel retailer. They decided to achieve their goal through a holistic and integrated strategy so as to capitalise on the country’s growing demand for online shopping. Fast forward to 2017 and the business is blooming for the retailer. For their third quarter in 2017, Woolworths revealed that their online sales have increased by 20%. According to a study analysed by Australian Consumer, Retail, and Services (ACRS) Research Unit, just four advertising channels (websites, personalised direct mail, TV ads and catalogues and flyers) are responsible for influencing 92% of a consumer’s purchase decision.

Online Delivery

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The ease of online shopping at Woolworths is certainly unmatched by many other retailers operating in the same industry. With reward offers and personalized shopping experience, customers can easily get their shopping delivered to their home or pick it up from the store, all ready for them.
The ‘Track My Order’ option helps customers know when to expect the delivery and even schedule the time of their delivery.

Shopping App

woolworths-app

Want to save even more time? The Woolworths app is available on both Google Play Store and Apple App Store. From personalised shopping lists to a store locator, the app offers the ultimate ease for its customers.

Dark Stores

When Woolworths opened its first ‘dark store’ in 2014, it was to reduce the time it took to fulfill online orders faster. The ‘dark store’ looked exactly like the other Woolworths stores, except that it was bigger in size. The aisles were maintained, the products were stocked neatly but it was closed to the general public.
You might wonder why a store wouldn’t allow customers in. That’s because the store isn’t for customers!

In this fast paced world, not many people have the time to waste on grocery shopping. A better alternative is online shopping but there were some issues to ordering online too. Most of the times, deliveries would take too long and Woolworths realised the need for faster deliveries. Hence, the ‘dark store’ was set up. It was Woolworths first dedicated online store and personal shoppers were amazed with the results.

With conventional stores, an ever present flow of customers makes it difficult for the staff to pick up online orders. The only time online orders can be picked is either early morning or at night, when the customer flow is at its lowest. Now, the dark store has solved this problem.

With no slow-moving customers blocking the aisles, the team at Woolworths dark store was able to fulfill orders quickly and at any time of the day. At peak hours, there can be as many as 80 pickers on the floor, at the same time.

Conclusion

Supermarkets are just one niche that Woolworths deal in. With a number of liquor stores, liquor supermarkets, petrol stations and discount department store chains, Woolworths Limited deals in numerous channels.

In order to enhance their digital business capabilities, Woolworths invested in contact center technology-as-a-service and in doing so, experienced a 40% reduction in touch points for email. Woolworths have expanded due to their award winning multi-channel initiatives and with their attention on innovation for increased customer experience, they are changing the face of Australian retail.

Hack: Lazy Customer Service Tips To Get The Most Loyal Customers

Posted on by David Dinh

One of the keys to maintaining a thriving business is a steady customer base. The Pareto principle states that 80% of business comes from only 20% of customers. This exemplifies the importance of your customer loyalty. Add to this the fact that the cost of attracting new customers is almost 6x’s more expensive and you have a powerful incentive to keep that core group of customers happy.

If your business’s goal is to live long and prosper, then any efforts toward building customer loyalty will certainly pay off. Following are 7 tips to increase and maintain greater customer loyalty.

Importance Of Customer Service in Customer Retention

1. Stand For Something

Customers are more likely to ignore you if your company doesn’t stand for anything. Research from the Corporate Executive Board that included 7,000 consumers from across the U.S. found that of those consumers who said they had a strong relationship with a brand, 64 percent cited shared values as the primary reason. If you want loyal customers, you need create real connections with them. What do you stand for?

2. Communicate with Customers

Whether it’s an email newsletter, a monthly flier, a reminder card for a tuneup, or a holiday greeting card, set up a system for reaching out to the customers you already have. Dedicate time to creating and maintaining a database of contact information, including phone, email, and snail mail addresses. If there’s a social media element to your business, invite people to your page or website and keep that online element fresh.

3. Commit to Quality Service

Go above and beyond your customer’s’ expectations. Your product knowledge will engender confidence and trust and enable you to anticipate their questions, focus on their needs and guide you both to an appropriate solution to their situation. It’s almost impossible to ask too many questions of your customers. Once you know what they want, you will be able to deliver the right product at the right time. In simplest terms: Listen to your customers and go that extra mile. Listening to customers also often enables you to make suggestions about your services and products the customer hasn’t thought about and they will appreciate your knowledge and your expertise to help them resolve their needs.

4. Courtesy and Respect

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You know how you like to be treated when you’re the customer. We all like to be accorded courtesy and treated as a sensible adult. You NEVER argue with a customer. Even if you know your customer is wrong, resolve the sales question or service issue quickly and in their favor and you’ve made a friend. Research shows that helping a customer resolve his or her issue results in continued business and likely makes a customer for life. Repeat business, not to mention word-of-mouth referrals, is the lifeblood of bottom lines

5. Be helpful even if your business can’t help them

If you can’t get your customer what they want, offer to help them find it elsewhere. It lets them know that you are willing to help without expecting anything in return. That unselfish gesture will make you stand tall in your customer’s’ eyes and will have them return next time.

6. Train Your Employees Thoroughly

Your employees are the face of your company, and training can empower them to make your company prosper. Training sessions should be a positive experience; boring training sessions are a waste of time and money and foster a negative attitude toward the company.

Encourage your employees to engage in training and explain how it will help them on the job and why it’s good for business. An excellent way to teach is on-the-job training, which facilitates on-the-spot demonstration of best practices.

7. Follow Up With Your Customers

No matter what the product or service you have sold a customer, you can be assured that they will appreciate it if you follow up in a couple of days to see how it’s working out. And it may lead to further business and more customers when your attention to detail and customer service is passed on by a happy customer.

The Art of Customer Retention

Customer service is a never ending task that will continue to build your brand loyalty. Customer Service is a long term commitment to customer satisfaction. It’s time to re-think how you engage and interact with your customers. There are many tactics, but no shortcuts. The tactics above should hopefully give you some fresh ideas for approaching retention, but they’re not a cure-all. Your product and service will do most of the heavy lifting in keeping customers loyal, and there are no shortcuts for that.

While pleasing customers with superior customer service is important, don’t forget to align your customer service goals to your business goals! There’s no point if you’ve got good brand image, if you don’t use it to your advantage! Realign with the Customer Service Goals template.

5 Traits to Look For When Hiring New Employees

Posted on by David Dinh

Want to know the top 5 traits of highly motivated and successful employees? Want to know where to start looking to ensure you have hired an A+ team? Summarized from various leadership conferences, case studies, and networking with rectuiters, I will save you weeks and months of anguish with the top list of qualities that are common with successful employees. These qualities make them outstanding candidates to hire to help your team be world-class and smash those management goals.

Characteristics Almost Every Successful Person Has

1. Disagreeable

The word disagreeable often has a negative connotation associated with it; however, progress cannot take place without someone willing to step up and do things their own way. I had the opportunity to attend a Malcolm Gladwellspeech where he emphasized that the most successful people are disagreeable. Now this does not mean they are disrespectful, they just know that to innovate, accomplish more than their peers, and be successful, sometimes you have to follow your own path and make decisions that nobody else is willing to do. For example, Dr. Freireich, the cancer biologist who is credited as the pioneer of cancer research and came up with chemotherapy, went against the whole medical field and designed his own drug. He risked his career, ignoring what his superiors were saying. Now this is an extreme example, and ignoring your superiors is actually not wanted in the hiring process, but the mindset of challenging set standards drives innovation and creates extremely successful employees. These people are often misinterpreted as disrespectful when making a first impression, but in fact, they just operate with higher standards of creativity and are willing to go off the beaten path to find their success.

2. Respectful

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Respect is a simple concept. You should treat everyone how you would like to be treated. You wouldn’t want someone to work for you if he/she is disrespectful because he/she will represent the company. At a company, it is just as important to respect people’s time as it is their property. Before and after an interview the candidate should say thank you and give you a handshake. Most candidates forget to send follow-up thank-you emails, and it is these small gestures that separate the best from the average.

3. Inspiration

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Another recurring characteristic I see in great candidates is that they are inspired and want to inspire others. There is a great quote that says, “I want to inspire others. I want someone to look at me and say, ‘Because of you I didn’t give up.’ ” I have found that the people who look for inspiration at younger ages end up inspiring their peers as they grow up. These traits don’t usually come from work, but outside activities such as sports, art, and other hobbies. They then transform into their work attitudes and drive people to be successful in their jobs. This drive to be inspired and to inspire others sets them apart.

4. Drive

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Out of all these traits, I believe drive is one of the most important. If you are willing to do anything it takes to accomplish your task, then you are resilient. Businesses should look for this trait because these people are extremely efficient in their work and want to succeed in their job. They will be up for taking on more responsibility early in their position and will be up for a more hands-off approach. They are the types of people who can be asked to do something once and will follow through on what was asked of them.

5. Leadership

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To be a true leader means to be able to step back and take charge with the people and not just bark out orders. Like I said before, I have been to many leadership conferences and I have learned again and again that it’s not always about the talent of the group, but the group’s ability to work together. As an ENTJ Meyers-Briggs personality type, I feel extremely at home in a leadership role, and I feel a leader should always lead by example. There are natural-born leaders, and then there are people who have to really work at it to gain respect from their peers. Either way, a successful leader knows that it’s more important for a team to work together than for a single person to be successful. Leaders are extremely adaptable and capable of working through hardships. It’s part of their resilience. Leaders have the ability to transform vision into reality, and they aren’t afraid to make tough decisions because they don’t shy away from failure; they embrace it. People look up to people who never quit and that’s why leadership, drive, and inspiration go hand in hand. A candidate who shows true leadership will always be a huge benefit to the team and willing to put in all the work asked of him or her.

Employee Traits

By no means do these exhaust the traits that a company should look for when hiring, but I have found disagreeable, respectful, inspirational, driven people who also embody leadership outperform many of their fellow employees. They are efficient, passionate and ready to take on any challenge presented.

Now let’s see how to put these employees to work. Check out 5 Customer Analytics You Should Be Measuring and Top 5 Secrets to Excellent Customer Service.

5 Proofs That Good Customer Service is the Reason Your Business Flourishes

Posted on by David Dinh

“These days, offering a great product or service, even if it’s at the best price, may not be enough to win and retain customers. The modern customer has come to expect excellence in customer service and it seriously impacts their purchasing decisions. For instance, research shows 55% of consumers are willing to pay more for a guaranteed good experience. And companies are on the hook for providing that good experience, given that it’s six to seven times more expensive for companies to win new customers than keeping existing ones. Good customer service pays.”

Request a FREE Conversational Software demo and learn effective customer service.

Woveon, a software customer service startup, realizes the value that your customer service provides and how important it is to keep a flourishing business. Woveon is an easy-to-use online application providing businesses a centralized location to manage their customer channels, such as social media, emails and phone calls. Using machine learning, social listening, a wide breadth of data, and a clean user interface, Woveon helps prioritize inquiries, identify valuable customers, and suggest personalized content. It simplifies online customer relations and makes businesses more efficient in managing the touchpoints they have with customers. We strive to ensure businesses can scale and respond back to all their customer enquiries.

These 5 Aspects of Customer Service Prove the Importance of Good Customer Service

1. Customer Loyalty

stick with me sayings led lights on the wall

Customer loyalty is one of the key features to successful business. When a customer is loyal, they will keep buying products, turning into more and more revenue. But how does a company identify and keep these customers happy? With Woveon, identifying important customers and helping with their every need is easy! Woveon has created AI (Artificial Intelligence) programs that identify businesses-valued customers in multiple ways. Say someone has shopped at an e-commerce website multiple times and has a great buying history but has now run into some trouble. If they contact the store via multiple channels such as social media or email, a representative from the business can pull up their information and understand they are a valued customer. They can focus on their problems more quickly, and this keeps up customer satisfaction.

2. Knowledgeable Staff

happy male and a female bartender

Nothing is more frustrating than calling customer service and feeling more apt than the “resourceful” representative. This is why it is so important to have knowledgeable staff who don’t just stick to a script and set of instructions. Your employees should be able to problem solve on their own. In order to do this, one should hire people who show interest in their business and understand its products. However, having knowledge on more than just the product is important. For smaller businesses, getting to know your customers and being able to talk with them more on a personal level can be very important. With Woveon’s technology, this is a walk in the park. Woveon’s recorded conversations not only help with consistency, but it can also help a customer service rep get to know the client more by reviewing past conversations. Although this may not apply to all businesses, small to mid-sized companies can really benefit from having personable customer service reps who are extremely knowledgeable about their product and clients. So before hiring any applicant, make sure he/she is enthusiastic about the product or service the company provides. 

3. Online Marketing and Social Media

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Most people don’t associate online marketing with customer service, but with so many online interactions going on between customers today marketing teams and customer service work hand in hand. Woveon has the ability to simplify and better market your customer service. With so many different social media platforms, it can be hard for companies; however, integrating all channels onto a single page makes it extremely easy to keep track of all customers conversations.

Try these 5 Creative Ways You Can Use Customer Service to Amp Up Your Online Marketing!

Companies should see social media as a huge opportunity when it comes to advertising and customer service. People contact companies over Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram all the time. Just the other week, I was on a United Airlines flight, and I had tweeted at them. They responded asking me how my flight was going within minutes. This is a great example of how customer service over marketing channels is so important. It shows to their followers how much they are invested in their customers and that they truly care. This also shows that the companies are up to date when it comes to interacting with customers. They are open to change and customers want to see companies that embrace change like they do.a

4. Customer Apologies

adorable dog

Everyone makes mistakes, some you can control, others just happen. It is always better to apologize first and then move forward. When it comes to customer service, the representative is almost never to blame; however, the customer may think differently. A customer service rep should apologize not only for the inconvenience the customer is going through, but also so the customer can sense that the rep personally cares about the problem.

Click here for 5 email templates to get you out of angry customer situations.

If you are nice to your customers, they, in turn, would be more likely to reciprocate. Of course, there will be good and bad customers, but as long as you are willing to be upfront, apologize for any mistakes you could have made, and are ready to solve the problem, most customer interactions will go smoothly. Remember, solving the problem is only half of the interaction; being fast, knowledgeable, and polite completes the customer service process.

5. Happy Staff = Happy Customershappy staff service

Forbes’ Rodd Wagner writes, “The formula is simple: Happy employees equal happy customers, asserted an article last fall in CEO Magazine. Similarly, an unhappy employee can ruin the brand experience for not just one, but numerous customers.” Happy employees = happy customers works. It’s a fantastic sentiment. It’s the right strategy. It is miles ahead of and far more on course than the assertions of the anti-happiness crowd. And if you need to boil down to a few words the connections between employee experience and customer experience, run with it.”

Staff retention is crucial to your company for improving customer service excellence. Research shows clearly that staff stay when they are happy and respect the company in which they work. Their happiness translates into excellent work when dealing with important customers.

Customer Service

Susane Friedmann, a writer on customer service says, “Customer service is an integral part of our job and should not be seen as an external extension of it. A company’s most vital asset is its customers. Without them, we would not and could not exist in business. When you satisfy your customers, they not only help you grow by continuing to do business with you but they will also recommend you to friends and associates.

The practice of customer service should be as present on the showroom floor as it is in any other sales functions and pertinent in the overall company environment.

Get started with a Customer Service Charter! Set the standards of customer service you expect your employees to deliver and your customers can expect to receive.

5 Online Companies With World Class Customer Management

Posted on by David Dinh

Giving world class customer service is at the core of keeping your business afloat. After all it is a satisfied customer that forms the building block of your company. Failing to retain your customers will inevitably result in a systematic slow demise of your business, something that any successful business would all like to avoid. Technology has changed the landscape of customer relationship services by bringing about a unique set of tools, also known as customer relationship management (CRM) software, to streamline the cumbersome process of communicating with numerous clienteles.

Learn how to identify valuable customers in one view. Request a FREE Conversation Software demo today!

By successfully implementing these tools, companies have been able to gain a more thorough understanding of their customer’s needs and if their products are able to match their expectations. Australian companies that are adamant to spearhead their businesses efforts to succeed will have to do more than just understand key internet metrics and viral campaigns. They will have to build a successful CRM strategy. They will need to successfully segment their customer base and schedule bulk emails without spending too much time on them.

What is CRM and Customer Management?

1. By effectively using business analytics to pinpoint a problem with your product which a customer is experiencing, you can easily fine tune them before they spiral out of control and affect all of your customers.

2. A CRM can help you track your customer’s online activities such as the number of times they press the like button on your Facebook posts and their responses to your emails. This will help you gauge their interest, which would allow you to build products that can engage them better.

3. You can also generate an automated response each time your customer submits a complaint. We understand that your customer representative team is not always available to answer any queries, but a CRM can do exactly that! As soon a complaint is submitted to your online forums (or Facebook page), the CRM software will promptly generate a helpful message which will keep the customer engaged to your website and allow more time for the sales team to address their grievances.

4. For most businesses, their emails just stack up on top of each other and are ignored. A CRM ensures that the right emails land in the right category depending on the contact and content. This way your business can ensure that key information about the customer is retained.

Related:
Customer Experience Strategy

Below are 5 Companies that are Killing it with their World Class Customer Management

The following companies have done exactly that and much more – to not only retain older clientele but also increasing the scale of their business to achieve a larger outreach.

1. Dollar Shave Club: Know Your Customer:

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By using an in-house CRM solution, Dollar Shave Club has been able to provide some of the best customer services, which most companies can only look at with envy. Their policy of “We don’t respond to situations, we respond to people,” has helped them grow into having millions of subscribers and satisfied, returning customers. This strategy was so successful that Unilever has acquired them for over $1 billion!

2. YouTube: Suggesting Similar Content to Users

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When you watch a particular genre of video on YouTube, say a gaming video, YouTube quickly picks that up and feeds that into their algorithm. So the next time you log on to their channel, you only see content related to video games. This way you won’t be spammed by boring content that might serve to push you away from their website. Because of this strategy, users who might waste 15 minutes on YouTube searching for their favourite content, can now find all relevant content on the front page.

3. Uber: Sharing Assets

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Customer relationships are at the very heart for companies such as Uber, Airbnb and Lyft. Their entire business is built around satisfying their customers. Uber specifically makes use of Salesforce CRM software to gain insights about their customers and keep track of every single transaction, interaction, ride rating and customer complaint. Uber is a massive corporation with a stupendously large customer base, so how does Uber immaculately address the grievances of their giant clientele? By implementation of a reliable and scalable CRM solution. https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2016/10/how-to-uberize-your-business.html

4. Amazon

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Amazon has hit the nail on the head when it comes to CRM implementation. Amazon makes it a point of strategy to ask their customers to create accounts. This is done so they’re able to collect as much data about their customer as possible. They use this data to segment their customer base, store account information, address details and suggest relevant products for them to buy. Their recommended products are able to keep users browsing through their website for hours on end; which drives up sales.

5. Target in Australia

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Large scale retailers like Target can never even fathom collecting their customer’s data without a proper CRM strategy in place. They can now collect this treasure trove of data from websites and call centres to help accelerate the flow of customer information and keep them abreast of offers that suit their particular shopping habits.

customer service charter template download cta woveon

4 ways of Delighting Your Customer Using Technology

Posted on by David Dinh

Today’s customer service landscape is changing faster than the blink of an eye and businesses which continue to stay out of the loop – perhaps out of ignorance, arrogance or a combination of them both – are doomed to get phased out of existence by other competitors that manage to keep up with the pace. A study carried out by SalesForce in 2016 showed that 57% of consumers expect the companies, which they purchase their products from, to innovate. This is an obvious consequence of the rapid adoption of technology and as the average Australian becomes increasingly tech savvy, so do their demands. A 2014 PwC study reported that 91% of Australian CEOs believe that technology will significantly change business trends. Here are just some means of winning over your customer with the use of technology

How to Use Technology to Satisfy Customers

1. Provide a mobile platform to users

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Mobile phones are now the preferred means of communication by customers. You could argue that mobile phones have somehow replaced plastic money; the use of credit cards is now seen as a cumbersome process compared to mobile phones! In fact, Australians have spent $755 million in the past five years alone to replace their smartphones, which were broken or lost. Companies which still require their customers to access their services by sitting in front of a computer will more than likely die out in the near future. It will be slow – and painful.

2. Effective use of social media

While no one is asking you to rack up hundreds of thousands of likes on Facebook and followers on Twitter, customers expect you to provide them with a responsive customer representative team, which could help solve out their grievances. As of January 2017, Australia has around 16 million users on Facebook and there are numerous choices and places for these young millennials to get their products from. If your customer representative team shuns them, the customer will ignore you back! Businesses which interact with their customers over social media, quickly climb up the leader board and can easily oust their immediate competition. Another smart idea is to use fancy Twitter hashtags. A perfect example of creative hashtags is by Lorna Jane, a popular retailer for women’s active wear; their marketing campaigns have gone viral because every time they post on Instagram, they make sure to attach a catchy punch line such as #thisisactiveliving.

3. Use of Virtual Reality

While Virtual Reality still has ways to go before the rest of the world could adopt it in large droves, Australia is already seen leading the pack, when it comes to proper implementation of this cutting edge technology. VR is more than just a toy that kids use to play horror games; it has tremendous potential in the tourism industry. If you owned a business providing recreational air based activities, such as hand gliding and paragliding? What are your traditional means of advertising the business? Using high definition pictures and high quality videos? That’s a thing of the past now; customers want to experience your services before actually paying for them. Get it? By using virtual reality footages, you can easily showcase the thrills of all adrenaline filled activities to your customer. They only have to use their VR headsets and compatible smartphones to gain an insightful experience. Competitors that fail to offer a similar service will often see their customers switching elsewhere and might lose out on their business. Tourism Australia uses virtual reality as part of their viral marketing campaigns – and it is working!

4. Using big data to gain some insights into your customer

It is more important than ever today to learn the customer’s behaviour, experience and response to your products and services. The key thing is to collect useful key metrics and discard those your company doesn’t benefit from. You will be able to design your business more creatively around your customer once you know what they like and dislike. An example of a company doing precisely that is Netflix, an entertainment company, which steams episodes of all popular TV shows to your handheld device based purely on demand.Their most popular TV show, House of Cards was designed based on the insight gathered by studying helpful customer data. Big data helped Netflix so much that their executives knew beforehand, that House of Cards would be one big hit. They generated Venn diagrams to pin point how Kevin Spacey was the perfect actor to star in the show. And he was!Similarly, another large company that relies on big data is Uber. Matching you with the driver closest to you relies on complex algorithms which feed on the analytics generated by data. The key to your success probably lies here.

3 Essential Tools To Help Predict Customer Needs

Posted on by David Dinh

Among the many things that a business needs to keep an eye on, predicting customer needs is one of the most important. Smarter customers have higher expectations and a business that wants to grow has to be able to not only meet these expectations but also predict them. Having predictive customer services might appear tricky but with the help of data analysing tools, you can monitor your customer’s buying patterns, demographics and other behaviours.

Predict Customer Needs. Request a FREE Conversation Technology demo today.

Through enhancing your customer services, you can also offer your clients a better shopping or buying experience as compared to your competitors. In this day and age where even a single bad review can make a difference, providing good quality, predictive customer services can make a major impact particularly in your marketing strategy.

Customer Prediction Tools You Need

Data Gathering

When you’re growing your marketing campaigns, you need to gather proper data on your customers and the following are some of the best resources that let you do so.

Google Analytics

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An old one but a gold one, Google Analytics has helped many businesses monitor the different facets of their customers behaviour. From monitoring the visibility of your website to keeping an eye on how much time the visitors are spending on the site, you can get a lot of data regarding your sites usage. The best part is that you can easily isolate the areas which are underperforming and figure out how to optimise them. Moreover, the data sheds more light on showing you visitor ‘habits’ on the site and how you can incorporate those to offer predictive customer services to them. Another good thing about Google Analytics is that it also allows you to test out any new feature and see how well the changes are being received. UpWork created a great article how to understand the customers coming to your website https://www.upwork.com/hiring/for-clients/google-analytics-to-better-understand-your-visitors/

Kissmetrics

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Another tool that lets you observe the habits of your visitors, Kissmetrics provides invaluable data that can be used to optimise your website and services. Individual monitoring ensures that you find in-depth information that tracks key growth in various segments as well as shows which features are wanted and not-wanted by the average visitor or customer. If you’re tapping into a new target market, Kissmetrics is the perfect tool for you as it allows you to monitor the response and provide more tailored predictive customer services that hit the mark properly. With a multitude of other features as well that are meant to help optimise your business with ease, Kissmetrics makes it easier to analyse and view all the changes being made. Kissmetrics wrote up a great article here about understanding customer data.

Inspectlet

If you find it hard to review the data you have received, you’re going to love using Inspectlet. With the aim of helping everyone, Inspectlet focuses on monitoring customer behaviour to provide credible data regarding site visitation time, areas of interest and more regarding the consumer. Inspectlet also takes monitoring to a whole other level by providing video recordings or playbacks of every visitor to the site. This in turn ensures a deeper level to monitoring. The best part is that Inspectlet is frequently used by sites such as eBay, Cisco and WordPress who are prime examples of great predictive customer services. Have a look at how to apply the Pareto principle to some of your customer analytics.

Applying learnings to use

Once you’ve got all your data in hand, you have to start using it. Anticipation of customer expectations begins here. For this reason, you need to use tools that help you create an engagement plan for future customers. The following are some of the best ones.

Rapid Miner

Rapid Miner offers an open source platform for data scientists to use with ease. With its comprehensive products that are specifically developed according to a particular industry and its requirements, Rapid Miner makes data application into credible models and their deployment easier.The best part is that it’s all open source; the team can collaborate and access the data with ease, regardless of their locality. Big businesses such as Siemens, Cisco, Samsung, Hitachiand more also rely on Rapid Miner for their predictive customer services plans. For an introduction to advanced analytics.

Angoss

Based solely on providing predictive analytics that aid in improving customer services, Angoss has services that are based not only on the industry but also on the nature of the analytics you want. From improving marketing performance to minimising any risks faced, Angoss is the complete solution for any business.Angoss is utilised by PayPal, Walmart, and eBay, TMobile, Cisco, Microsoft and MasterCard. The success of these businesses stands to testament to Angoss’s services. Moreover, with services available on a global level, Angoss is accessible for all, regardless of where they function in.

3 Creative Ways You Can Ensure Your Clients Always Succeed!

Posted on by David Dinh

The one key area that you need to look at when you want to run a successful business is ensuring that you can keep your clients happy. How can you manage such a thing? Well, by making sure that your clients are successful, and that isn’t always possible. There are many businesses that struggle to provide their clients with meaningful services that result in them being successful.

Learn how to manage your customer conversations easily. Request a FREE Conversation Software demo today!

If your clients aren’t successful, then you will not have many repeat customers, because people like working with successful businesses. This concern is bigger for small businesses, because they aren’t always able to deliver top-notch services to their customers. 

Here are 3 Creative Ways you Can Ensure your Clients Always
Succeed:

The quality of services delivered to customers is always important for a business, but along with that, the business must also ensure that they are helping achieve customer success in the long run.

1. The Customer Success Factor

successful client business

So, why is success for clients so important? It is because every major business needs to realize the value of helping their partners achieve success as well. The fundamentals of business haven’t changed over time, but the only thing that has changed is that now businesses must ensure that their clients are successful as well. This can be tricky sometimes because you must do business with a company that wants to work with yours to ensure complete success in their industry.

Related:
10 Customer Service Strategies that Create Loyal Customers

This means that every business strategy that you come up with, must also include how it affects the success of the client. This is done to ensure that all aspects are covered, and there are no disappointments after business is concluded. There are multiple strategies that you can employ with the right vision and commitment at the forefront to ensure that your business partners and clients are happy and satisfied. It is important to take the success factor into account, because you need to create love between your business and your customers.

2. The Customer is Always King

Any business that places the interests of its customers above their own is going to be a successful business, because they are going to go out of their way to make sure that the customer is content. Most businesses that fail, do so because they stop caring about their customers. It is important that you always treat the customer properly, and remember that they are always the king.

If your business is failing to win over more customers, you should probably look at what kind of customer experience you are offering to your clients. There is enough data around that points to the importance of great customer experience in helping businesses retain and attract new clients.

  • There are numerous studies that have shown 40% of brands that didn’t receive good services, refused to work with that business again.
  • It also states that 90% of businesses will go to a direct competitor if they are given poor customer experience.
  • Nearly 60% of clients are willing to pay more to receive better customer experience.

Businesses that fail to value their clients, and don’t care about their success are likely to lose out, and not get ahead in their industry. Therefore, it is imperative that you find out creative ways to ensure that you give priority to customer success.

We also want our clients to succeed, which is why we are going to provide you with 3 creative ways you can ensure that your clients always succeed.

3. Genuine Interaction – Treat them right

Make sure that you have genuine interactions with your customers, because it is the only way that you are going to help them feel at home. There is no secret about the fact that happy clients are much more willing to work with you and provide you with better word of mouth regarding your business. By treating your customers properly, you will ensure that you build a genuine interaction with them, and they will feel better in doing business with you.

4. Don’t come across as too strong

You need to always respect your clients if you want to keep them happy and satisfied with your services. There are lots of customers who don’t want to scare off your clients or disappoint them. That is the main reason why you should always treat your clients with respect, because if they are upset with you, then your business is the one that is going to suffer. Disgruntled customers are not good for business, and that is where you need to be patient.

You should do everything in your power to get your client in a better mood and try to resolve their issues. There aren’t going to be many clients lining up to work for your business if you don’t work with your clients in a respectful manner.

5. Hear their problems

You should always be listening to your customer’s problems so that you can help them in times of trouble. There are not many businesses that would work with a company that doesn’t take their feedback on board. You should have good communication with your client and always take everything they say into account, because that is the only way you are going to improve your situation and guarantee customer success.

How to Turn Your Company into a Multi-Channel Success

Posted on by David Dinh

Multi-channel is the future. Recently, a survey involving a thousand consumers was conducted to study into consumer shopping habits. Of the thousand surveyed consumers, 80% preferred having a choice of shopping in store, by telephone or online. There was a time when all the power in a customer-seller relationship was with local shops. A customer would drive for hours to get a chance to buy something but often, he/she would end up being turned away because the shop had already sold out. Since they got results without making any extra effort, multi-channel marketing or sales did not make sense to the sellers at the time.

Today, the entire relationship has been turned upside down. Now, all the power is with the customer and sellers have to constantly adopt new technology just so that a customer considers them when buying. Today, businesses need to make it as easy as possible for customers to buy something from them. In such times, a good way to increase your chances of netting a sale is appearing on different channels familiar to potential customers. In short, you need to whole-heartedly embrace multi-channel sales and marketing.An opportunity to engage with consumers across a variety of channels, multi-channel marketing allows you to maintain a consistent message and brand. On the other hand, multi-channel selling can help you to profitably sell to more people. With a multi-channel strategy, you can reach the right customers, at the right time, using the right channels and the right messages. This allows you to focus towards marketing efforts, improve customer engagement and achieve better Return On Investment.

See also: Learn how to manage multiple channels with Woveon

To collect customer contact information, companies today use at least three channels. Considering this, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that more and more businesses today are focusing most on their efforts on multiple channel initiatives. Moreover, businesses are doing everything they possible can to make these initiatives successful. So, what are the efforts you need to make your multiple-channel initiatives successful? Following is how to turn your company into a multi-channel success.

Successfully Managing Multiple Channels within Your Business

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Plan Carefully

The most important aspect of your multiple channel strategy is planning. Even if your idea is great, it can turn out to be disastrous if you execute it without much thought. Instead of helping you grow, this will end up costing you. For this reason, you must plan carefully what channels you’ll sell on, what systems you will use and how you will integrate those systems together.

Turn Multiple Channels into A Single View

Using a carefully planned strategy, you can accurately capture and link multiple engagement points into a single identity. When this happens, you will be able to get a single customer view into your multiple-channel activity. With this single customer view, you will know exactly when a customer wants you to reach out to him/her. This in turn will help your business to generate a positive response.

Eliminate the Need for Manual Data Entry

A multi-channel strategy creates repetition of finding customer information, sharing information and customer profiles across different systems and importantly, repeating the same conversation again so the customer service rep can understand the situation. The information stored in these systems includes information related to customers, inventory, items etc. Sharing this information across your systems is mandatory. Whether a customer buys in-store or online, you would want to track his/her order history.

If an item is purchased from your webstore, then the decrease in inventory should reflect in your amazon account and vice versa. Moreover, you must share product information from your point of sale (POS) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) to your online sales channels. Often, businesses using a multiple channel strategy for the first time rely on manual data entry to transfer data from one system to another. Unfortunately, the time and cost incurred in this process is something the business underestimates. It may take hours to manually enter data such as entering online orders into your ERP or POS. Moreover, manual data entry makes you prone to typing mistakes that result in out of stock, lost orders and worst of all, ticked off customers.

For the reasons mentioned-above, you need to eliminate manual data entry when using a multi-channel strategy. Today, there are numerous software-based solutions that automate data processing, speed up processing of orders and eliminate those costly human-errors.

Know Who You’re Selling To

As important as knowing where to pitch, knowing who to pitch to can increase your chances of making a sale. You need to create various ‘buyer personas’ i.e. the customers you’re likely to run into when selling on various channels. These personas represent the different customer groups interested in your product. By customizing your message appropriately to those groups, you can increase chances of making a sale. Ultimately, this will help you to turn your company into a multi-channel success.

6 Tips to Using Emojis in Your Digital Marketing Campaigns

Posted on by David Dinh

“A picture is worth a thousand words.”

And similarly, an emoji is also worth more than a word. This has actually been proven in a University of Missouri-St. Louis study–seeing an emoji is much more enjoyable than seeing a word in the Oxford Dictionary. Surprisingly, research has shown that looking at a smiling emoji ? activates the same parts of our brains as looking at a real smiley face! Emojis change our mood and may even alter our facial expressions to match that of the emoji. Out of the people surveyed, 75% of men and 84% of women think emojis are more effective in expressing their feelings than words.?

What’s mind-boggling is that we’re not born with these kinds of reactions to emojis. Rather, emojis are so powerful that they have actually shaped our brains and created a new brain pattern.? They’re also modifying our vocabulary and speech patterns. According to Instagram, users are substituting Internet slang such as “bae,” “rofl,” etc. for emojis.

A whopping 92% of the online population uses emojis. Emojis are loved or liked ? by 64% of users but are hated or disliked ? by only 6%. The tremendous rise of emojis has significantly affected digital marketing campaigns. Emojis increase the like rate of Facebook posts by 57% and the comment rate and share rate by 33%.

Because of the effectiveness of using emojis, digital marketing campaigns have pounced on the opportunity. Every year, brands use emojis in digital marketing campaigns 609% more than they do in the previous year. In 2015 alone, brands’ emoji usage increased by an unbelievable 777%.?

By now, you should be thinking, “How should I best use emojis for my own digital marketing campaigns?”?

Well, you’ve come to the right place. 

Use Emojis for your Digital Marketing Campaigns

1. Know your emojis

This may seem like common sense, but misuse of emojis could really backfire and show how out of date a brand is. For example, the peach emoji ? can have different connotations than what seems obvious. Be sure to check out Genius’s comprehensive descriptions of each emoji, Hubspot’s guide on obscure emojis, and Daily Mail’s 12 commonly misunderstood emojis.

Genius’s List of Emoji Names

cmo-marketing-social media -Genius’s List of Emoji Names

Source

Not only should you know the basic meanings of each emoji you use, but you should also know which ones to use in the first place. Which ones have the highest engagement? Which ones appeal to your audience the most? See the chart below for the top 10 most popular emojis.

average engagement emoji

Source

2. Know your audience

Again, this may seem like common sense, but there are some powerful ways, such as audience segmentation, to cater to specific sectors of your audience. Keep in mind that although all of the statistics mentioned above seem to be very positive, there are still 11% of customers who find using emojis in digital marketing to be inappropriate and 12% who think it’s childish, which are significant portions of your audience.

Age

Unsurprisingly, emojis are used more by younger people, who also have a higher chance of thinking that it’s normal for brands to use emojis. The social media channels in which users see emojis vary for different age groups as well. Users aged 25-44 prefer emojis in texts ? whereas users aged 45+ prefer emojis in emails.✉ Thus, you should make sure to tailor your digital marketing campaigns to users of different ages.

cmo-marketing-social media -

 

Researchers discovered that English-speaking US emoji users ?? were more “direct” while Japanese emoji users ?? tended to be more indirect, using emojis to decorate their messages or imply something for other users to deduce.

See the chart below for a comparison of emoji usage on Instagram in different countries.

text containing emoji by country

Source

Obviously, brands should maximize their emoji usage in digital marketing campaigns in countries like Finland ?? but reconsider using emojis in countries like Tanzania.??

Ultimately, being mindful of differences in culture, social norms, communication, language, etc. across different regions goes a long way for digital marketing and for any cross-cultural interactions in general.

Age and region are only two of many possible ways of using audience segmentation to customize your digital marketing campaigns for different users.

3. Combine emojis with videos

According to Twitter, chances of videos being retweeted are 6 times higher compared to photos and 3 times higher compared to GIFs. Video ads that include branded emojis kindle SIX times the level of emotional connection and interest.

4. Simplify user engagement

How do you want your customers to use emojis? Do you want them to share/retweet the post? Answer a question? Tag someone else?

General Electric ran an effective digital marketing campaign by asking users to send a snap of an emoji to view their “Emoji Table of Experiments.”

cmo-marketing-social media

Source

cmo-marketing-social media -Emoji Science

(Source: http://emojiscience.com)

Domino’s launched a digital marketing campaign that allowed users to order pizza by tweeting pizza emojis. ? This campaign not only dramatically simplified the process of ordering pizza, but it also increased brand awareness for Domino’s, which benefited from free advertising thanks to Twitter users.

cmo-marketing-social media - Domino's Pizza Emojis Digital Marketing Campaign tweet

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The bottom line is that so many people today are too busy to devote time and attention to digital marketing campaigns, but if you can find a way to make their lives easier and make it simple for them to engage, you’re golden.?

5. Don’t overuse them

With all of that being said, emojis are a double-edged sword.⚔ Similar to the law of diminishing returns in economics, where past a certain optimal point, something becomes inefficient, the same goes for emoji usage. Let us all learn from Aristotle, where he stated that we should find a mean between two extremes–excess and deficiency.

59% of users aged 18-34 believe brands are trying too hard to incorporate emojis into marketing campaigns.

Like everything in life, there’s a balance. Aim to strike that balance for the use of emojis in your digital marketing campaigns as well.

6. Use emojis to track customer reactions

As we said in the beginning, emojis are powerful ? ways for consumers to express their feelings and are more effective than words for most users. This creates a vast field of opportunity for companies like yours to gather fast, up-to-date data on customer reactions to their products, which can be used to target customers in the future. Surely, we can all agree that customers these days are much more willing to share their opinions on social media rather than in surveys.

At first glance, emojis can seem like very simple, fun things that you use in your messages to your friends to make sure that they know you’re joking. But emojis actually have tremendous potential and have already transformed the ways we think ? and communicate. Start making use of them today, and comment an emoji below to let us know what you think!

Are you looking to further capitalize on digital marketing but not sure where to start? We’ve got you covered with 8 marketing plan templates.

CTA marketing strategy template