One-to-one Relationship Building

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The Internet is a fantastic way to have an international business withminimal investment.
Many companies spend a lot of money to automate theentire customer interaction process. As your products becom...
The Internet is a fantastic way to have an international business withminimal investment. Many companies spend a lot of money to automate theentire customer interaction process.
As your products become morespecialized, the larger your requirements will be for providing theopportunity for your customers to conveniently interact with you. Themore convenient the interaction is, the stronger your relationship withthe customer will become.
This convenience is not limited to thepurchasing process. You need to have specialized technical services,order tracking and customer service that exceed what your competitorsare offering, or else your business life on the Internet will be veryshort and unsuccessful.
Before you learn how to offer these services,you need to ask yourself if you are willing to offer them? Start byasking yourself these two questions.Are you in business to conduct transaction based relationships? orAre you in business to build relationship based transactions?If your answer was yes to the first question, we recommend that youinvest your money somewhere other than the Internet. Everyone cannotoffer the lowest prices.
The lower your prices are, the higher yourvolume has to be. Eventually all of your competitors will be offeringproducts below cost with free shipping and so will you! Ultimately,there will only be a few survivors in your category and most if not allof those companies won't be making a profit.If your answer was yes to the second question, congratulations! Youalready have an idea how create a foundation for building long termbusiness relationships.
If you build the relationship first, thetransactions will follow, not just one transaction but manytransactions! How can you build relationships with people or customers you never talkto? Here are the steps we recommend you implement.1. Make your web site easy to use.Nothing is more annoying to a customer than a web site that is difficultto place an order on.
If your customers cannot complete their order in 4- 5 screens or pages, then your shopping cart system is too difficult touse. Make sure the customer receives a copy of their order automaticallyonce the order is placed.2.
Provide your customers with a confirmation message that the order hasbeen received.3. Provide your customers with a shipping confirmation message and atracking number.
(If you are using a shipping process that allows you totrack the shipping status of orders).4. Make your phone number highly visible on your web site.Many Internet businesses think that they do not have to talk tocustomers because they have a web site and they do not a physical store.If you think talking to customers, solving their problems and addressingtheir concerns is not worth your time, you are wrong! Making it easy forcustomers to conduct business with you, is what building a relationshipis all about.5.
Provide details of your customer service policy and response time.Show your customers that you care about them. Post your customer servicepolicies.
"We return all e-mail inquiries within 24 hours". If this isyour policy, then make sure you do it.
Most consumers on the Internetare surprised if a company responds to inquires within 24 hours. If youcan do it faster, you can start building relationships faster.6.
Have a process for handling large problems with customer orders.Make sure your order form requires the customers telephone number. Ifyou have a big problem filling a customer's order, have your customerservice person call them on the telephone.
That's right, call them onthe telephone! If you think it exceeds a customers expectations byresponding to their e-mail request within 24 hours, imagine the kind ofrelationship you can build if you call them, instead of waiting 24 hoursfor them to respond to your e-mail.7. Technical F.A.Q.'sMake sure your web site has complete and current technical information.If you want your customer service people off of the phone, make it easyfor your customers to solve their own technical problems.
You can dothis by offering easy to read and easy to follow technical advice onyour web site. Don't forget to let customers know how quickly you willrespond to their technical questions too! Our advice is, the faster youcan respond the better your relationship will be.Implement these seven easy steps and you will be on your way to buildingrelationship based transactions, that will last a lifetime! Article Tags: Customer Service, Call Them Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com .