Survey: What methods do you use to stay in touch with your customers?
Please let me know if you use, telephone (if so, is it wireless, voip, etc), email, chat, text or so other method.
Also, how large a group do you have and what are the hours of operation.
Please feel free to add any other information you feel might be meaningful.
Thanks,
Charles
Good Answers (2)
Renée C
Employee Engagement Specialist, President renee@powerconferences.ca, Professional Facilitator, Coach & Open Networker
Best Answers in: Customer Service (1), Using LinkedIn (1)
Get on the phone and see how they are! Invite them to lunch, give them some tickets and join them. In other words, build a relationship. You will never develop true customer loyalty until you have a really solid relationship with your best customers, and you should be trying to make all of your customers your best costomers! The personal touch goes a long way, Charles. Never underestimate the value of human contact. Ezines and newsletters get deleted (yes, even yours), but everyone loves a friend who is interested in them and attuned to their needs.
Renee
Vanessa D
Operations Director at Zee2A / Marketing Coach / Editor in chief at The Marketing Edge
Best Answers in: Customer Service (1), Event Marketing and Promotions (1), Economics (1), Blogging (1), Computers and Software (1), Using LinkedIn (1)
Hi Charles
My main method of keeping in touch with clients (and prospects) is through my eZine which I produce twice a month. It's a great way of staying 'on their radar' without being over-the-top. I also actively request feedback and comments from them (readers / clients / prospects) in the eZine, by email, and 'contact us' boxes on my website.
I also find that my blog is a great way to keep in touch, with many clients, prospects, and even complete strangers subscribed to the feeds.
I also have a diary system in place for sending brief personal emails, and making 'keep-in-touch' phonecalls at various points during the year. (obviously that is over and above the regular contact I have with current clients).
Links:
More Answers (3)
Ajay M
Senior Manager - Branch Head
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Satisfaction surveys and feedback forms are very very crucial and relevant to today's business environment of stiff competition in order to provide extra comforts and personalised attention more so on the next time around/visit.
These are basically the mouth piece of the guests to the hotel management.
Hotels where I have worked like The Oberoi Udaivilas in Udaipur, Rajasthan (India), which happens to be the 'best' small luxury hotel in the world today, are the front runners when it comes to providing a luxurious and personalised service.
I started my career working there for a year between 2002 and 2003.
The hotel staff there are imbibed with an attention to detail and focus on not just meeting all customer expectations or demands, but exceeding them.
As part of this personalised service, guests are checked in and checked out in the comfort of their rooms and not at the front desk.
So, while we were doing the check outs, it was our duty to insist that the guests filled out the feedback form, sealed it and dropped it in the box near the front desk (it was not to be handed over to the staff in the room).
The feedback box was opened by none other than the General Manager of the hotel (An American) every morning and after going through the feedback in the morning meetings, would either complement or demand explanations from each head of department and/or concerned employee depending on the type of feedback.
We had to give explanations on why any guest refused to provide us feedback and the General Manager went about contacting them directly (at the address provided at the time of registration) through his office to obtain such feedback, so no one could escape by hiding negative feedback.
Such was the emphasis and importance given to guest feedback.
Our motto was to "exceed guest expectations each and every time and never to say NO to a guest."
I have personally gone to great pains to ensure our motto was met and guest feedback was always 'excellent'.
Some would even include arranging and going for boat rides in the middle of the night (the hotel is situated on the banks of the lake Pichola in Udaipur) or even organising musical instruments like a piano after dinner for the guest to play in the lobby !
This set the tone in our careers for being passionate about customer service and having a great sense of pride in accomplishing our tasks.
Of course, there were rewards and recognition to achieve the desired feedback/results of excellent guest feedback, but the 'passion' involved or oozing out goes over and above all these monetary rewards, bonuses, incentives, certificates, etc., because the chief reward is self-satisfaction obtained from a job "well done !"
This service standard has been used as a benchmark by one and all in the hotel industry across India and the very reason there is a vast difference between being just a five star luxury hotel and an Oberoi group's luxury hotel.
Please go through the list of awards and recognition this hotel has been collecting over these years, truly the best standards in the world... I have provided links for your reference.
Apart from this, each guest got a personalised reply from the Front Office Manager &/or the Sales Manager of the hotel, thanking them for the feedback and the status of the action taken by the hotel management or clarifications based on any negative feedback.
I have handed over these letters to the courier myself, so I know for a fact on this (I was the concierge at the point of time in 2002).
How much more personalised service can get ? Each guest gets a response in a weeks time after leaving the hotel.
Amazing !!!
Links:
Tracey T
Chief Get-It-Done Officer™ at TCT Business Solutions
Best Answers in: Public Funding (1), Venture Capital and Private Equity (1), Internet Marketing (1), Customer Relationship Management (1), Writing and Editing (1), Professional Books and Resources (1), Career Management (1), Communication and Public Speaking (1), Using LinkedIn (1)
My business is smaller and more relationship focused. I use telephone, email and yahoo messneger mostly.
Judy B
Creative Purrsuits Writing and Consulting Services
Best Answers in: Starting Up (2), Using LinkedIn (2), Mentoring (1), Manufacturing (1), Computer Networking (1)
I am like Tracey, I am a home-based business person and work at two online businesses. It depends on how my clients want me to interact with them.
I prefer online messaging so we use msn, gmail, yahoo and I just found out about meebo from a post on here and now I have them all in one place which is great!
I find that my male clients prefer to use the telephone, I don't know if it is because I offer writing services and they are getting in touch because they can't write and don't want to write on a chat screen or what, but this makes it harder for me.
On chat I can save the conversations with the comments from the client and cut an paste them into my client file. By phone I have to interview them and it is more work for me to write it out or type it out as we speak.
This is also the same when I interview someone for an article, I send out email questions and the men all want to answer over the phone. The women are great and write lots of stuff for me in email sometimes with attachments!!!
