Archive for February 14th, 2010
How Do You Sustain And Grow Your Customer Relationships?
February 14th, 2010 | 
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The most important thing in sales and marketing is to attract and retain your most profitable business customers. In order to accomplish this feat, you must devise and implement a customer strategy that builds, fosters, nurtures and extends relationships with your customers. Your company profits only when the earnings from retained customers exceed the costs to acquire and to service customers over time. There is a strong correlation between long-term business success and long-term customer relationships. Successful businesses capitalize on every stage of the customer life cycle—from customer selection, to customer acquisition, customer retention, and customer growth. Once a certain level of trust and comfort has been established, most customers prefer to remain loyal to companies and their products. Customer selection and acquisition is just the beginning of the customer relationship life cycle. Ideally, your company should target only high value and low attrition-risk prospects. The cost to acquire a new customer is much greater than the cost to retain an existing customer. Depending on the industry, experts indicate that it is five to ten times more costly to acquire a new customer than it is to keep and develop an existing customer. In the retention stage of the customer’s life cycle, a company retains its customers by delivering on its value proposition. This ensures that the customer needs to look no further; that is the rationale for providing the highest-quality of service. When your customer relationship is based on trust, cooperation and collaboration, the customer is more willing to listen to your new ideas, try your new products/ services, and considers you as a long term, trusted partner. A savvy business owner/executive understands that it pays to nurture existing customer relationships. If a good working relationship has been established, then it is easier to up-sell and cross-sell your products/services to this existing customer. If your customer’s business is growing, there is a good possibility that there will be an increased need for your products/services. In the growth stage of the customer’s life cycle, increasing the value of each existing customer is the ultimate objective. Many organizations think in terms of the “lifetime value” of a customer. Customer growth strategies generally focus on increasing the share of each customer’s expenditures by expanding its company’s range of products/services. It is crucial, however, not to lose sight of the importance of continually acquiring new customers. In other words, if your company becomes too dependent on any one or only a few existing customers, then the future growth of your company could be in jeopardy. So, be cautious that the growth in purchases by, one or a few customers does not represent too large of a proportion of your company’s total sales. Striking this balance, between servicing existing customers and acquiring new customers, is imperative. Creating and managing this balance can be a major challenge to management. However, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications offer solutions to this challenge. CRM is the process of tracking and managing all aspects of a company’s interaction with its customers, including prospecting, sales, and service. Here are just a few customer touch points that you can use to strengthen your relationships and keep your customers informed and engaged: • Email messages, newsletters, and surveys: Provide product/service updates, promote goods and services, and communicate news/events. • Feedback: Ask for, capture, and act on your customer’s input. • Insight: Research your customers’ markets, strategies, and goals. • Customer loyalty: Implement loyalty, affinity, and rewards programs. • Relationship building: Talk and listen to customers in order to maintain a dialogue and to build a trust based relationship. • Be accessible: Make it easy for customers to reach you. • Customer satisfaction: Implement a customer satisfaction policy that provides a way to resolve/remedy problems and issues. • Involvement: Engage customers in product development /enhancement, via beta tests, focus groups, and pilots. • Anticipate customer needs: Learn their business, their purchasing patterns, and their requirements for effective proactive solutions. • Become an indispensable resource: Look for ways to add value, to be a real partner, and to help your customers achieve results. • Help lines: Provide support, service, advice, and information. In building customer relationships, remember to value the “personal touch.” Make an effort to get to know your customer “as a person.” You will be surprised at how much you may have in common. Establishing personal bonds goes a long way toward building lasting relationships. Your efforts will be rewarded with repeat business, referrals, and satisfied, loyal customers. Copyright © 2007 Terry H. Hill You may reprint this article free of charge in your newsletter, magazine, or on your website, provided that the article is unedited, and that the copyright, author’s bio, and contact information below appears with each article. Articles appearing on the web must provide a hyperlink to the author’s web site.
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Posted in web | 
Tags: CRM, customer, customer relationships, customer service, Customers, marketing, relationships, sales | 
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Instant Messaging Might Carry Viruses
Even if you have never used it, you are probably familiar with the new emerging form of instant communication known as instant messaging, abbreviated as IM. Much resembling the email success, the difference in instant messaging is that the two or more parties exchanging information can do it almost instantly without any waiting period in-between messages. But, as all other computer generated communication systems have been affected by the dangerous viruses out there, so do now instant messenger users have to protect themselves against malicious code that can be easily transferred and downloading directly to their computer. Various popular programs, like MSN Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Messenger, among many others, allow people to communicate in real time by exchanging written messages, sound or images. Unfortunately, neither this type of communication can be considered anymore sd virus-free. Hackers, virus writers and spyware coders are today able to develop their malicious content and release it with greater speed through the use of such instant messaging online boards. When unaware people open the files supposedly send by the other party, their computers become infected with a possibly highly dangerous virus. Victims of such an unfortunate event reported their computers slowing down or that they even completely stopped responding. Others did not detect that something went wrong, as nothing appeared to change, but later found dangerous spyware installed in their computer, which was tracking down the information they entered and was transmitting it to unknown receivers. Since this is one more Internet threat, people can take basic precautions to avoid having to face the stressful fact of having one day to format their computer system and loosing all their valuable information. First, one should be extremely careful before deciding to download a file through IM; particularly when the file is send by an unknown counter-party. In the cases when the sender is known, computer savvies advise people to use another medium, like email, phone or some other method, in order to contact directly the sender and secure that the file transmitted is not a virus. Second, it is extremely important for all computer users to frequently update their software operating system. By keeping it up-to-date, they can reduce the chances of having to battle a new threat that their older version was not developed to detect. Third, IM users should use the most updated version of their choice of instant messaging service. Visiting the IM webpage and downloading the most recently published version secures that their computers stay protected against malicious codes using IM software programs to be transferred from one computer to another. Forth, downloading the newest antivirus and antispyware versions is of critical importance. As these programs can detect and remove malicious codes, it is only logical to have them frequently updated so as to increase the security measures taken against possible harmers.
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Posted in About Internet |
Tags: IM software programs, instant messaging, messengers |
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Digital Photography Equipment
What do we mean by Digital Photography Equipment? Digital cameras are in vogue today and almost everyone carries one everywhere. It reminds one of the Japanese tourists in Europe or America decades ago who became the best ambassadors of Canon, Ikon, Yashika and other famous brands. Today the same companies are manufacturing digital photography equipment and competing with other digital firms around the world. Good and sharp results have always been the requirements of the photographer and digital products do offer the best there is in the world today. But it is not only about digital cameras alone! One also need several other equipment as ancillaries before your collection of a digital studio or even that small hobby room is complete. With computers controlling the processing and printing of photographs, it is essential to learn a bit of information technology as well to be successful in the use of digital photography equipment. What equipment do we require for Digital Photography? Quite obviously the first piece of equipment is a digital camera! The market is full of different makes and models of this product and one need to be very careful in choosing one for their use. For a novice the basic models will suffice while for the professional one may go for a SLR model that is much more sophisticated and has a lot of useful features. The memory chip or key is an essential part of the digital camera and depending on the usage is rated in terms of MB capacity of storage, just like a hard disk or RAM memory chip! The batteries used in digital photography equipment are important and only Nickel Metal Hydride or NIMH rechargeable cells must be used. The charger is an important part of the digital equipment and a 4-cell charger is recommended. At least 8 to 10 hours charging is required for the batteries to retain a useful charge life. The advantage of a digital camera is that you can easily take snapshots of the family and even use the inbuilt self timer to do a remote photographic session. For this one requires a good standard tripod for best results. The tripod will ensure trouble free photography of even moving objects and is imperative as an ancillary to this hobby. This digital photography equipment is only the basics and several optional items can still be purchased. The software that accompanies the digital camera is without fail the most important item in digital photography. It not only provides proper drivers for the operating system being used, but also bundles variety of image processing software and viewers to facilitate your handling of those lovable pictures that your digital photography equipment took! Finally, it is always worth your while to review and investigate the multitude of digital cameras and items available in the market. The Internet and off line stores offer great discounts and models to suit almost every taste. One must also check those who have purchased digital photography equipment at one time or the other and have experienced the immense pleasure one gets out of this – let us call it – a social hobby!