Problems in dealing with customer complaints?

Posted by hecto on April 16, 2010 under General Management, Management | Be the First to Comment

Customer complaints are a part of any business in general. The internet made it possible for the traditional transactions that used to be conducted in person such as purchasing and payment to be carried out online. Taking into account the fact that billions of transactions take place everyday you can also expect errors to occur. I have written some tips on how to approach customer complaint:

1. Enable the Customer to complain

What I mean here is that you should make it possible if not very easy for the customer to complain in the following ways:

- On Your website make sure the customer can have a contact form or telephone number where they can call up and make a complaint, you do not need to have a specific number for complaints but the customer needs to be able to contact the business.

- If there the complaint is specific for a certain department in the business then put the customer through to the department, it will show them that you actually care about their complaint.

2. View complaints as free advice

It is important that you view complaints as free advice for your business, it could be that via a complaints you actually improve your consumer service. So question the customer and takes as there will probably be something you can improve in the service somehow.

3. Apologize to the Customer

Even if the customer is wrong it is important that you apologise for the company and for the person who may have made a mistake. However try not to apologise too early as it will lead to further irritation for the customer, let the customer speak and explain first.

4. Identify and Fix the problem

At times you may be able to identify a problem from a customer complaint and it is important that you fix it as soon as possible to reduce further dissatisfaction from more customers.

5. Follow up

After sometime get in touch with the customer and tell them that their complaint was important to you. You could use this follow up to show the customer that you care about their complaint and that you value them as a customer.

Raising Finance for your Small Business

Posted by hecto on March 9, 2009 under Finance, Management, Starting your business, Tips | 3 Comments to Read

You have a great idea and want to start a new business or you may just want to expand your small business and take it to the next level. One of the major obstacles to this is not having the finance to do so. Therefore I will give you some tips on how to raise finance.

1. When negotiating for money make sure you take is serious and think about everything carefully. The same planning and thought as making a sale should go into it.

2. Make sure you know how much you want to raise as it can be very difficult to go and ask for more and that is not advised.

3. Think of overdrafts for the short term because usually you need to pay it back usually 12 months. If you want to raise long term finance you may have to sell shares, that’s if you have a company. You could also ask for long-term loan from the bank.

4. Usually you are expected to invest as much as an outside investor or maybe half. You may find that if an outside investor invests a lot more then you in the business you will end up losing control.

5. Talk and plan with your family before you go and secure loans on your house or give personal guarantees; while the reward may be great you do not want to put your family’s main assets at risk.

6. While you can use banks to raise money there are a number of other ways you could use to raise money, such as; private individuals and companies, fiends and family, local authorities and venture capitalists.