It is possible to please your customers if you provide quality goods and service with a pleasant demeanor. Still, satisfying everyone in your client base isn’t always possible. What you need to know is this: What made your client leave? Learning from your mistakes is the only way to keep these clients from leaving in the future. You need to know what part of your customer service or marketing failed.

All businesses want to have happy customers,but, studies show 95% of unhappy customers do not complain back to the business their unhappy with.Sure it is nice not to have to deal with those complaints. But, if you don’t deal with unhappy customers you will never see them again. And remember even if you never hear from them again they will spread the word to others about your business and that will hurt your business.

For every person that complains, there are about 25 people who are dissatisfied in most businesses that never raise an issue. There is a considered loss of 25 times the number of customers who complain about the service. Allow the 90% plus people that may have continued to buy from your business if only you solved their complaint in a timely manner as sufficient motivation!

One of the most important and easiest things a business can do is set up a customer feedback system. In order to do this you will need to setup a system that tracks customers, customer buying habits, and contact information. After the basic system is in place, it can actively ask for feedback from your customers about their shopping experiences with your business. Although the approach is straight forward and simple, it does require planning out the details and information for the foundation of the feedback system. Unfortunately, many businesses are their owners fail to utilize this valuable approach of customer feedback.

You can get a free copy of my latest ebook by clicking here: The 7 Keys To Business Marketing Success. Eric Menzies writes about Home And Small Business Marketing at BizRave.com

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1. Past and Current customer behavior

This is the best predictor of how customers will behave in the future. They are the characteristics marketers should most often look at. Analyzing customer tendencies and trends allows the marketer to anticipate, if not predict, the customers reaction to different situations. The marketer must take note that behavior is action oriented, not a description. For example, being a 35-year-old woman is not a behavior; it’s a demographic characteristic.

For example if you know from history that customer A is likely to make a purchase if presented with a discount promotion, then you might want to change your marketing tactics to include promotional selling when approaching this customer. A great deal of observation is needed if you desire to predict your customers’ behavior. This involves a great deal of notetaking as well as watching what reaction the customer has to different situations.

2. Active customers are happy customers

Happy customers are retained customers. If your keep your customers involved, they develop a sense of contentment from the fact that they are in control. Marketers will take advantage of this by offering promotions that allow these customers to exercise this feeling of control. The most common means of achieving this kind of relationship with your customers is to offer promotions such as discount cards, discounts, sweepstakes, coupons, and customer points that can be converted to prizes.

Remember, if the marketing is not active, then the customer is not active as well. And as we said earlier, active customers are happy customers. Inactive customers on the other hand are lost customers. So activity on the part of the marketer is very important. Customer retention relies heavily on satisfying your customers.

3. Customer Retention depends on:

- Action

- Reaction

- Feedback

- Iterate

This is a cycle that the marketer should perpetuate. If the marketer fails to continue this cycle, more or less, they will start losing the customer. This process makes for a constant improvement in customer relationship and in marketing power. It also optimizes the marketers’ strategy toward the customer. Remember that not all customers are alike, so adapting your strategy to fit the unique types of customers is vital in improving customer retention.

- Listen -

It’s funny, but it’s not the marketer who does all the talking. If you expect to have your customers to listen to you, you must also learn to listen to them. Remember that marketers are trying to present products or services that the customer desires. The marketer will never learn the right approach towards addressing these desires unless he listens to his customer.

- React -

Watch for the customer’s reaction to different situations and note them down. If the customer shows favorable reaction to a particular type of pitch talk, try that approach again next time. If the customer shows a negative reaction to, let’s say, too much talking by the marketer, the marketer should take note of this.

- Feedback -

Knowing what goes on in the mind of your customer is very important. Usually they will be glad to have their thoughts regarding your service known. The marketer may receive this feedback through suggestion forms, interviews, and other methods.

4. Allocating Marketing Resources

Customer retention is not free! You should consider customer retention as a major activity. And all major activities require resources. If customer retention is not given proper attention, it will fail. Customer retention needs resources to be effective.

You should not be afraid of its costs because customer retention pays its own dividends. Remember that is easier to keep a customer than to win new ones. And that it is easier to lose one than to gain one. Lost customers will probably never come back. And to top that, they spread negative publicity about you. On the other hand, customers that are happy attract more customers to your service or product. Customer retention, therefore, should be an integral part of any business plan.

For more great customer retention strategy related articles and resources check out http://retention.hrhaven.com

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Promotional Corporate Gifts

There are two main positive effects in distributing corporate gifts to your clients. First is that receiving an exclusive business gift increases brand recall and loyalty amongst your clients. This, in turn, would increase both the order size and order frequency of your customers, thus resulting to the growth of your business’ revenue. Second, the corporate gifts that you would distribute would of course include your brand or corporate logo. By effectively homing your promotional gift strategy to your valued clients, you are most likely to distribute a gift that they will find useful. A useful promotional gift would, of course, entail frequent usage from your recipients giving your imprinted logo on the merchandise great exposure to not only your valued customers but also to their peers who are also most likely part of the market niche you are targeting.

One important question that you should address during a promotional item strategy is how much would you spend for the corporate giveaway? The rule of thumb is to spend between $1 to $5 on corporate gift per person. This so-called general rule is a good starting point for your costing, but you are the best judge in deciding how much to spend since you should know your clients well. The cost for your chosen promotional gift should be dependent on how much you value the client. For example, if a certain group of your customers orders thousand of dollars worth of your products regularly, then it is safe to say that these clients deserve a prestige corporate gift such as an engraved Waterman pen rather than the $3 mug that you would distribute to your other customers.

It is also important to know which giveaway is best accepted by the niche you are targeting. If you want to play it safe, you can always distribute the top corporate gifts based on studies conducted by the Promotional Products Association International (PPAI). The most warmly received giveaways are the following:

Top corporate gifts:

1. Promotional Apparel
2. Promotional Pens and Writing Instruments
3. Promotional Calendars
4. Promotional Mugs and Drinkware
5. Promotional Bags

But if your market is more of the free-spirited type such as the youth segment, then it will be more effective to utilize the “fun” logo merchandise such as the promotional toy and games and other corporate gifts that fit this age group, like sports and outdoor products.

With over 20,000 corporate gifts out there, there are a lot of merchandise to choose from. But again, the bottom line is to choose the corporate gift that compliments your market niche. Because the more the customers find your promotional item useful and valuable, the more effective your strategy will be in advertising and reinforcing your brand and logo.

Remy is a Promotional Adviser specializing on Promotional Swag, Custom Promotional Items

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Big Mistake! Why? When you realize it takes anywhere from 3 to 5 times more money to get one new customer than to keep an old one happy and loyal – well, you do the math. You’re throwing money away each and every day that you’re not focused on customer retention.

By using some of the following ideas, you won’t have any problem building a dynamic list of satisfied customers.

How Do You Get Your Customer’s Names?

Simple. You ask for them.

Have a big glass jar set up in obvious place and ask people to drop in their name card. Then as a thank you, create any number of offers for people – a monthly drawing for a prize like a voucher for free drink or lunch, a discounted spa treatment, bundle up a special gift pack of some of your products. It doesn’t have to be expensive. The point is to make it fun and memorable. If you let people put one business card in each time they come in, they get more chances to win. And more reasons to support your business on a regular basis.

Keep in Touch with Email

The second easiest way to keep contact with your customers is through email. When they first use your services, ask them for their email address. Then try any of these ideas and watch your customer list grow.

Send them a thank-you email for using your services, purchasing your product, joining your travel tour, or staying in your hotel. It doesn’t matter what your business is, a sincere yet simple thank-you letter is so underused today, believe me, you will be remembered.

Send occasional special offers, information on new products, links to related products or information they might find useful.

Send stories about your products, how they’re made, about your team of employees – personalize your business and people will respond.

Send out a FAQs page, Frequently Asked Questions, about your services, business or the particular product they bought.

Your growing email list can be managed quite easily with one of the online email hosting services, especially if you want to set up a regular e-newsletter anywhere from weekly or monthly to three or four times a year.

Get People Involved

For a tried and true approach to customer involvement, ask people their opinion. Make your customers understand that you appreciate and value their suggestions and ideas for improvements. This can be done with a simple suggestion box you set out in a prominent position in your business. Or take the process online. There are a number of inexpensive companies that let you set up a survey or take a poll. You can send it out via email or post it on your website. The data is then collected, analyzed and you can download the responses. See end of article for a few possibilities.

Are You Spending 3 To 5 Times More Money Than You Need To Keep Yourself In Business?

Your current customers are your best source of business growth, if you’ve proven your products and services are of good quality, of course. It just makes sense, satisfy their needs and they are much easier to sell to again, at a higher price point. Stop spending 3 to 5 times more money to find new customers and build loyalty with the ones you already have.

Two widely used online survey companies you might like to try are: http://www.surveymonkey.com
http://www.constantcontact.com

Linda Kaun is a freelance copywriter specializing in the non-apparel side of the textile industry. If you need to generate more qualified leads and increase ROI, she helps you reach your audience through the power of targeted, persuasive copy.

Find out more at http://www.lindakauncopywriting.com for website content, direct marketing sales letters, ads or trade show marketing collateral.

© Copyright – Linda Kaun. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

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Promotional pens attract the attention of the customers, create awareness about your products, stimulate their interest and create a desire in them for buying your product. Even your existing customers will be interested in your products. They will keep on buying your product again and again. The existing customer will also spread your brand awareness among other through mouth communication. Whenever they use your products, you will get their attention as well as attention of the people around them.

While introducing promotional pens in your advertising campaign, it is important that you should go for a market research, set forth your goals, see your budget and take the help of some professional design services for designing and printing message. Research will find out who are the existing customers and potential customers, how you can go ahead with your pens as gifts, where and when you should offer these promo gifts to your customers. And if you go with a target and as per your budget, you will get the desired results in time.

You may have placed ad on TV, radio, newspapers and Internet or involved in direct mail, personal selling, public relations and trade shows, they have less impact on your business and retaining the existing customers as compared to the impact of pens on your business. People watch your ad on the media and forget soon. They get e-mails and delete them even without reading. You may have put up stalls in trades shows but it looks empty if you do not have strategy for the campaign. Offer them at trade shows and exhibitions and see how you will be the centre of attention there.

Go for good quality promotional pens which meet your needs – the requirements of your customers. Your items should be suitable with your products and objectives. They should not mismatch with your business. If they are of good quality, your customers will use them and you will get your results. There are a number of well-known names of pens available. They are economical and will be easy for you to buy for your customers.

Log on to the internet and see the samples of promotional pens. The leading gift houses in the supply of promotional products offer a great collection in a range of striking colours and innovative designs.

To find out more about ordering custom printed business gifts and conference gifts and other fantastic items check out the internets leading online suppliers today.

Gareth Parkin is the co-founder of Ideasbynet, the UK’s leading online promotional pens and printed pens company based in the north of England. Established in 2001, he has taken the UK gift market by storm by the application of modern business thinking and the latest search engine marketing techniques. For more details visit http://www.ideasbynet.com

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Use automated calling to increase customer retention and extract new sales from current customers and highly targeted lists. It is a great time to take advantage of your current customer base with new products and offerings.

1. Harvest sales from current customers for services they do not have. Customers want to purchase from as few places as possible.

2. Find customers who are dissatisfied with your offerings before they leave. Customers don’t call when they are unhappy with your products and service! You need to call them and find out what they are thinking and how to better serve them.

3. Provide better customer service with automated calls. Customers need to be kept up to date on new pricing and features without taking time from your every shrinking staff.

4. Follow-up on all those thousands of past customers. You know that past customers can use your services because they have in the past. These thousands of leads can be called at a very low cost and forwarded to your call center if for those who show an interest.

5. Send out surveys to determine what new services would be of value to your clients. Your customers know what products or services are marketable to them. Stop guessing and start asking with automated calls.

6. Market with highly targeted purchased leads. Many companies provide lists of those people or business that exactly fit the profile of your current customers. You can be very specific for the economic characteristics and geographical location. We will provide an unbiased list of quality vendors who we have used in the past with great success.

To project a professional impression of your company be using automated calls.

ROBOTALKER is an automated phone calling system which can be used for voice broadcasting. It can send automatic voice call alerts, marketing & reminder calls. For More Information, please visit: http://www.robotalker.com

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A sound and manageable customer retention strategy is vital to build upon the links you have established and to keep you in top spot when an existing customer needs you again. To achieve this simple but often overlooked element of customer retention requires a simple customer retention strategy.

The aims are straightforward; stay in contact, build knowledge and be ready for when they need you. This is all combined within a process called ‘Customer relationship management’. There are several ‘Customer relationship management’ software solutions that will streamline the knowledge and data you can collect about your customers. This means you can make that knowledge available to everyone in your team.

However, a successful customer retention strategy demands that regular contact is made with your customers on a personal level, i.e. you speak to them on a regular basis. This has the benefit of engaging them in your own progress but also allows you to build a picture of their own plans and aspirations. In essence you build a ‘customer relationship’. This means you are not always just in contact to push for their business but are rather seen as a team member, helping them to make the right choices.

http://www.aql-ltd.com

AQL team of professional consultants can bring you valuable business advice. AQL take the pain out of business generations and allow your marketing team to focus on genuine potential customer. AQL is a recent winner of the ‘Jobs for Mums’ award.

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Try this: Go back to your customer rank report from 1996, just ten years ago, and take a look at your top ten customers. How much does this top ten list differ from your top ten list in 2006? Odds are, few of these high volume customers are still on your top ten list, or for that matter, still doing business with your company. What happened to those that left? Where are they doing business now? If they left you for a competitor, do you know precisely why?

Here are 15 ideas for improving your customer retention rate:

• Measure customer retention by salesperson. This will give you a good idea of which salespeople are losing the most customers.

• Hire a professional to train not just your salespeople, but all customer contact personnel on how to deliver Level III customer care. Drivers, customer service personnel in the yard, credit personnel and inside salespeople interact with customers sometimes more often than outside salespeople do.

• Teach all employees how to most effectively deal with an irate customer.

• Set a standard within your company for customer response time and monitor how well your people are doing against these standards.

• Make it a policy to answer all phone calls by the third ring.

• Install a policy to under promise and over deliver when making promises to customers. Without training, conscientious employees who are trying to please the customer will often do just the reverse.

• When a customer complaint is unresolved, keep the customer informed. Call customers before they call you even if you have nothing to report ― giving them an update on the status of the complaint.

• Give your people the flexibility to change the rules to serve the specific needs of individual customers.

• Measure service! Measure on time delivery, backorders/fill rate, accuracy of deliveries, accuracy of billing, etc. Improve your company’s credibility by using these numbers to support your service claims.

• Follow up with customers to check their satisfaction level, especially when a customer is new to your company. Ask customers questions. Don’t assume that they are happy with your quality and service.

• Invest in quality people. When it comes to people, you get what you pay for. Don’t pinch pennies when hiring customer contact personnel. The quality of your people equals the quality of your company.

• Empower your people to take whatever action is necessary to take care of a customer. If you are going to spend money, spend it to improve your rate of customer retention.

• Don’t solicit business from a customer until you are convinced that your company can meet his or her stated customer service expectations.

• Make a list of each of the value-added services your company offers. Ask each employee to commit it to memory.

• Show your customers that you care. Ideas: Incentive travel programs, educational contractor newsletters, thank-you notes, open house events, educational contractor seminars, etc.

It costs far more in marketing costs to have to replace customers you have lost, so it’s my suggestion that you invest heavily in training your people how to hold onto the customers you have NOW.

Bill Lee is author of 30 Ways Managers Shoot Themselves in the Foot. $21.95 + $6 S&H. http://www.BillLeeOnLine.com

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