Three Areas Your Business Can Stay On Top

In business you either sink or swim, so what are you doing to make sure your brand doesn’t play second fiddle to your competitors? Staying on top of your game and thus ahead of your competition requires regular reviews of business processes and practices.  Management and team meetings analyse and review performance with the goal of identifying areas for improvement and advantage.  Marketing, payment systems and customer service can provide a competitive advantage.

Customer service

As essential as customer service is to a company’s success, many businesses fail to pay enough attention to it. Revenue and customer service have a very close association.  Unhappy customers will leave and there’ll be a corresponding  drop in revenue and vice versa.  Happy customers will spend more and revenue rises so focus on improving the areas of your customer service that make a real impact and provide a competitive edge including providing the goods and/or services desired, and at competitive prices.

Fundamentally customer service is all about making sure your customers’ needs are met,  Respond to their questions or issues about a good or service, or why their bill didn’t mesh with what they thought it would be; and reward them for their loyalty. All three areas, need ongoing reviews and improvements so your customers return and recommend your business to their peers.

Payment Systems

Improvements in customer payment systems including accepting credit cards for transactions can be game-changers for business.  There are many payment options available now however being the early adopter of new technologies may not be a good fit for your brand so keep up to speed on what’s available and it’s development including how secure it is and when the timing is right for your business to offer it.

For now credit cards are the most popular form of payment and reports show consumers using their cards to purchase products and/or services usually end up spending more.

Marketing – spreading the word

Finally, given how fast things move in both the business and consumer worlds these days, the former can’t afford for the latter not to know anything about them. With that in mind, make sure you are doing all you can to market your brand (especially online), notably how you go about making the customer experience as perfect as possible.

While there are a myriad of means by which you can market your brand and how it is in the best interest of consumers to use you, some work better than others. One marketing technique that has grown in popularity in recent years is webinars. If you’ve never done a webinar, don’t fret. They are not all that difficult to put together, though make sure you take the time and effort to do it correctly. Best of all, they can deliver positive results on a regular basis.

In using webinars to improve your business model, also be sure to get feedback from those who took the time to view the production. Even if some feedback is less than positive, use it and learn from it. In the meantime, you can promote some of the positive results you get (viewer testimonials) to further market your brand. As you look to increase your brand recognition, notably with a stronger online presence, make sure your business is doing all it can to improve in these three areas of customer service, payment systems and marketing.