Archive for July, 2009

How to Write Effective Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Written by MichaelZ on July 31, 2009 – 5:41 am -

Why bother?

Good customer service is the life blood of any business. Although new customers are very important good customer service will help generate customer loyalty and repeat business. With each satisfied customer your business is likely to win many more customers through recommendations and remember, if you are not taking care of your customers, your competition will.

Online customer satisfaction surveys will help by not only identifying problem areas but will also demonstrate to your customers that you care and are proactive in looking for ways to improve the service that you provide.

 

Where do you start?

Objective - Before you start compiling your survey consider what the objectives of the survey are, in that way you will remain focused and find it easier to decide what questions to ask.

Analysis - Having completed the survey consider how you will analyse the answers.

Bare in mind that ‘closed’ questions (where the respondents are asked to choose from a limited number of responses) are easier to analyse than questions that are ‘open’ (where the respondent can reply in anyway they want).

A lot will depend on the predicted volume of respondents, the higher the volume the more important it is to have an easy method of analysing the results.

Opportunity – As well as obtaining valuable market research data keep in mind that customer surveys are also a good way to publicise aspects of your service that your customers may not be aware of.

Before you publish the survey confirm that the questions you have asked will provide you with market research data that when analysed will help you make informed decisions.

Then, read through the survey from a marketing view point, check that you have phrased each question so that every opportunity has been taken to promote your business?

The ideal question will perform the following three functions:-

  • Market research - provide valuable feedback to help you improve your customer satisfaction levels and in turn your business
  • Marketing - promote aspects of your business
  • Information/Education - advertise a service that you provide that your customers may not have been unaware of

For example:- Do you find the in-store baby changing facilities useful?

In asking this question the store will hopefully not only receive useful feedback on the baby changing facility but they will also promote the store as being child-friendly even beyond the customers who actually require the facility.

Warts and all – to benefit most from a customer survey you need to be prepared to dig deep and accept the worst.

A customer satisfaction survey should be designed to identify any problem areas so that they can be fixed; conducting regular customer satisfaction will help prevent complacency and will also give early warning on where you may be losing business to your competitors initiatives.

 

What should you ask?

Each business is likely to have unique factors in relation to providing good customer services however there are common areas that are going to be relevant to all businesses be they a physical store, online store or a service industry. The following are key areas to providing good customer service.

Communication - What do you do to make it easy for your customers to communicate with you?

When customers telephone are their calls answered quickly; are their enquiries about products or services handled properly? A good business will make every effort to ensure that whatever the customers query it is resolved by the right person, quickly, politely and fairly.

If customers reported problems that cannot be resolvable immediately do you promise to respond in a given time period and do you deliver on your promise?

Use a customer satisfaction survey to ensure that all your staff are considered by your customers to be courteous, helpful and knowledgeable.

Location – Are you doing everything you can to ensure that your customers find it easy to visit you, if a physical store, does it have good access and is it conveniently located?

Making it pleasant, making it easy - For a virtual business it is important to ensure that your website is easy to use and aesthetically pleasing.

Regardless of the store being a bricks and mortar or purely an online internet store, is the store properly laid out, can your customers find what they need and is there sufficient information and help on hand to explain how a particular product works?

The right quality products – Not only should you measure the quality of the service that you provide but you should check that the products and services that you market are what the customer wants and closely match their expectations.

Value for money – Cheap or expensive is hardly ever a good measure, value for money is.

Do your customers equate your business with value for money, if not, why not?

Speed and attention – Regardless of the business most customers will want to be dealt with quickly but attentively.

Are you doing everything to prevent any delays?

A good business will try to treat each customer as an individual, does yours? Attention is one thing but this has to be hand- in-hand with a quick and satisfactory resolution of the query.

Demographics and Specific issues – Take the opportunity to profile your customers, for example where do they live and what is their age group?

The better you understand your customers the more you will be able to properly target your business.

Encourage customers to highlight their specific problems and provide contact details.

 

What is next?

Having completed the survey analyze the results.

Trends – Look for specific and common areas where the service needs improving.

Ask yourself if any criticism is valid and is there anything that can be done to resolve or minimise the problem?

Training – Are the staff properly trained and do they have sufficient knowledge?

Where employee training programmes have been implemented have they had a positive impact on the business?

Follow-up – If a customer who has completed a survey has raised a specific issue do all you can to ensure that their complaint is addressed.

Do not lose a customer by squandering an opportunity to resolve a problem.

Continuously Monitor - Based on the survey results make changes and then re-measure by issuing further surveys.

If you are interested in tracking customer satisfaction and would like to see a sample survey for a store that demonstrates some of the above advice please view the following example that can be used as a customer satisfaction survey template.

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How You Go About Incorporating a Business

Written by MichaelZ on July 30, 2009 – 2:13 pm -

If you are starting a new company, compliments to you. Starting a brand new company can be an draining, although satisfying, adventure. Prior to opening your doors for operation, you will need to get registered in the state you are operating in some form or fashion.

Proprietors mull over a sole proprietorship, even a partial partnership, when initially starting out. Forming a corporation does have its advantages and it can very well be very simple, particularly when you make use of an incorporating online solution. We will present several of the required actions you may wish to think about following in order to obtain your company’s incorporation, which can be done by yourself if you use incorporation kit, but it can be a bit difficult.

The primary, as well as obvious, item you need would be a name for the company. Consider how you want the company name to be. Have the professional name contain words that mirror the kind of company you are involved in or the service that your business provides in order to assist in creating professional name awareness and to allow your brand to be more memorable.

If you will be operating throughout various states, make a decision as to the states you have a preference for or may want to increase your presence in, beginning with the exact state your company will have its head office in. The filing of the incorporation papers should be comparable in any region. The difference will be you’ll need to file the business’s once annual accounting and additional conditions separately. The fee structure may vary and those would also need to be satisfied independently.

Before filing, you’ll want to determine what kind of a corporation you wish to create, e.g. either an standard C corp, or an S corp, and whether you will use a incorporation service company solution. These have their benefits, so educate yourself on the benefits and the flexibility of every one to help you when making a decision which is right for you.

The final thing is you’ll need to have the ability to list yourself and an additional executive of the company, aka an acting representative. If you are a modest-sized family business, it may be your spouse that you list or a next of kin which possesses a good business mind that is reliable.

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How About a Good Game of Online Roulette?

Written by MichaelZ on July 29, 2009 – 2:04 am -

Roulette is often said to be the casual casino player’s game of choice. It’s quite easy to walk up to the roulette table and simply place a bet - at the roulette table, no one is typically sitting down, and there is no maximum number of players - so it’s almost as though you’re always welcome at the roulette table. Additionally, it’s an easy-paced casino game that just about anyone can learn the basics of by just watching a few spins.

The game of roulette is a negative expectation one - i.e. over the long run you are expected to lose. Here are a few things you should know in order to at least get better looking odds than anyone else at the roulette table. On American roulette tables, all bets calculate out to the same house edge of 5.25%. The single exception to this rule is the 5-number bet, which has an even worse edge of 7.29%.

How then can you get better odds? Here are a few tips:

1. Keep an eye out for is a rule called ‘surrender’. Surrender is available at many casinos. The rule only applies to outside even money bets, and it doesn’t affect the edge of your whole session. This rule simply cuts your losses in half in the instance of a green pocket hitting. So if you’re betting an even money outside bet and a double zero or zero hits, you only lose half of your bet, not the entire thing. This of course pulls the house edge on outside even money bets down to 2.63%, which is definitely a lot better.

2. Look out for the single zero roulette wheel, i.e. the European roulette wheel. A European roulette wheel has a single zero pocket, and no double zero. There are only a total of 37 pockets left on the wheel, which does cut the casino house edge. This small and subtle shift lowers the house edge on all bets (not just the outside even money ones) to 2.70%. Very very nice.

Hopefully you’ve found our roulette information useful. If you haven’t already done it, you should try playing roulette at your favorite online casino via sites like: Best Roulette, Beat Roulette or Beating Roulette.

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