Did you know that most businesses though they promise, fail to have valid customer communication? I’m pretty sure you’ve experienced this as a buyer. You’ve purchased something from a company only to deal with an automated teller or operator, and find yourself to be frustrated with the experience because you can’t talk to someone that’s human. How many times are you going to go back to this company if you never have any human interaction with them, especially if you have some technical issues with the product or service? It’s absolutely ludicrous to try to run a business with customers not having human interaction with the company.
How Shall We Communicate?
As business owners we should communicate with our general public, they are the ones that pay our bills and paychecks. Customers want to feel like they have a genuine and personal relationship with the company that they are doing business with. Granted, they deserve the right to have a personal relationship with you as a business. Right Relationships are key to developing a successful conversion rate in your business. I’d rather have 10 loyal clients to me, not only because the service is great, but they know they are dealing with an upright gentleman, and they are ecstatic to do business with me. Did you know that if you have a loyal clientele, they will refer you to people that are as like-minded as themselves, then you will build on your loyal customers. Some customers will not refer you though no matter how good you are, simply for the fact that they don’t want to share you with anybody, and that’s quite alright if that’s their stance, you should feel honored. You see making money in the business, though it’s necessary, shouldn’t be the number one goal. Creating a client should be your number one goal, because if you create a client, then you will hit the gold vein which is called, “Residual Income!”
No Customer Communication Creates a Rocky Presence
Let me tell you a little story. I was doing some graphic design work for a customer about 6 months ago, and he wanted to order some 3-layer carbon copy forms. No problem! The only problem was that I’ve never ordered this particular item before, so what I had to do was to find a supplier that would give me commercial rates. So immediately, I went to the ever famous Google, you can find everything on Google, right? Well I did. I found a supplier of the carbon copy forms, the prices were great, and they did exactly what I needed. What made this even better is that I didn’t have to search for them, they were the number one ranked page in Google for NCR Forms, I was ecstatic. So I created an account, placed my order, and paid for it directly. I received an initial email stating what I had paid for. One week goes by – no confirmation email stating the product has been received for printing or that the product has been shipped. By this time my customer is getting extremely antsy, because he needed the product way before he chose to use me to order these forms. So I told him to cover myself that it might be 10 to 14 days to receive the product, so that calmed his anxiety quite a bit, still a little frustrated, just as I was, but I didn’t let him know I was frustrated. Ten days go by, still no confirmation, still no product. I begin calling this company repeatedly, leaving messages, sending emails, and they never responded back. They didn’t even have a customer service line, it just went to voicemail. So finally, I came to the conclusion that this was a fraudulent company, contacted my bank to dispute the transaction, and received my money back. The major problem now was that I had a customer that still needed his NCR Forms like yesterday, and now we still don’t have any order in progress. So what I did is I remembered a company that I did business with before, I contacted them, they had what I needed, but their prices were higher than I had originally told the customer, so I had to contact the customer and explain the situation to him. So he had to pay more money for something that I told him would be half of the price, I couldn’t charge any more for the product, I had to eat the price, and basically did this job for free, and because of this I haven’t heard from the customer again.
The Moral of The Story Is…
The moral of the story is, don’t trust every company with a nice website and great prices. Call this company, and make sure you talk to somebody about your needs, and your concerns, so that you build a business relationship with the company that you want to work with. When you visit a company’s website, make sure you look for tell-tale signs of validity. If a company’s prices are too good to be true, they have misspellings in their content, and you can’t get in contact with them, then I wouldn’t risk doing business with them. I hope that you guys can learn from my bad experience, and this is why I share this with you. Even if you don’t desire to have a relationship with the business, at least contact them to know who you’re dealing with personally. I hope this helps.
One question you should ask yourself when putting your website together is, “Do my graphics compliment or compromise my content?” Compliment vs. Compromise in the world of web design will effect what Google Analytics describes as “Bounce Rate.” Your Bounce Rate is how long a visitor visits your website. If your graphics compliment your content and your content compliments your graphics, then most likely visitors are going to visit your website longer. Granted, if your graphics have nothing to do with your content, or they’re just not innovative or cutting edge, then most likely that potential customer that you worked to get to come to your website will, “Bounce!” I’m going to talk about these two very important roles that should co-exist in the life of your website.