How To Handle Customer Complaint Calls And Emails
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If you are in business, it’s inevitable that at some point in time, you will deal with an unhappy customer. I have had clients use a three question formula that works extremely well. You can ask these questions and solve the problem whether you are communicating in person, over the phone, or by email.
The Three Important Customer Service Questions:
1. What happened?
2. What was supposed to happen?
3. How can I make it right?
It’s that simple. If you care, and you are empowered to make things right, asking those three questions should fix almost any customer problem. It’s important to let the customer do most of the talking and regardless of what the resolution is, make sure they know that they aren’t just a number, that you really and truly care.
Twitter Success Tips
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Yesterday, I posted a “Twitter Strategy Chart” to my blog and I received dozens of emails asking me to expand on what I wrote and share my Twitter success tips with them. This post is my answer to those emails.
10 Twitter Success Tips
1. Be Genuine And Authentic -
This means, all twitter posts should be from you personally. Don’t have employees tweet for you, don’t you dare have virtual assistants tweet for you, it must be from you 100% of the time.
2. Add Value -
When you post twitter tweets (say that five times fast, it’s fun!) try and add some value from time to time. For example, share a shortcut that you learned today, a great Wordpress plugin that other people might love, a recipe idea, words of encouragement, anything! Just make sure you try and add value.
3. Never SPAM -
Everyone hates spammers. Don’t ever SPAM your twitter followers because it’s a nasty thing to do and it doesn’t work anyway. If all you do is post affiliate links people will unfollow you and rightly so. Remember #2 above, add value.
4. Communicate! Use Twitter To Interact With Your Customers, Prospects, Friends, Etc -
Twitter is an excellent tool for communication. Ask questions, get feedback, help others, build relationships. Frequent communication is the name of the game.
5. Don’t Welcome Every New Follower Publicly -
This one will probably cause some backlash but I am going to say it anyway. Some twitter members send a public thank you to the twitosphere every time someone new follows them. I am here to tell you that not everyone needs to see that, if you want to send a thank you why not send a direct message? There are times when I have an entire screen of “thanks for the follow” tweets and it’s not something I recommend that you do.
6. Twitter Design -
Don’t have the standard basic/boring design. There are lots of cool twitter backgrounds out there now that you can use to make your twitter page look any way you want. Another good twitter design idea is to make sure that you list your website, blog, and other social media accounts on your main twitter page so people can easily find out more about you if they wish.
7. Understand The Twitter Community -
This is a big one. For people new to twitter, look around and visit many different twitter pages so you can understand how others use twitter and determine what makes sense to you versus what you don’t like. Understanding the twitter community and how people use twitter will help you get started on the right foot.
8. Don’t Be Shy -
Twitter is a communication tool and the only way to have some fun with it is to…you guessed it, communicate! Reach out to people you don’t know, ask questions, answer questions for others, DON”T BE SHY! Most people on twitter are friendly and if they aren’t then they aren’t worth talking to anyway. Start today but being proactive and talking to others that you don’t yet know, it’s fun!
9. Use Twitter Search -
The twitter search tool (http://search.twitter.com/) is an excellent tool to find like minded people and find people who are interested in, and talking about things you like. For example, let’s say you love tennis. Go to the twitter search tool and type the word tennis in and you will find many people tweeting about tennis. BOOM, there you go, you just found a new group of friends you can start tweeting with. Join their conversation and get tweeting!
10. Have Fun! -
This is the most important step of all. Be yourself, be authentic, and have some fun. Don’t be afraid to be the real you and tweet about what you are doing in your daily life. Be interested in others and you will be interesting to them.
You can follow me on twitter here: http://twitter.com/paulgram
Free Twitter Strategy Chart
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I created a Twitter Strategy Chart that shows my simple strategy for how I use Twitter. (See the small snapshot above) I thought I would give this away to anyone who would like it. The chart is in PDF format and can be downloaded below. It can also be freely distributed.
Excuses Are For Losers
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I’ve heard them from employees, joint venture partners, clients, and many others. Successful people don’t make excuses, they create results. That is the bottom line.
If you want to succeed online and make a billion dollars, I don’t care if you are rich, poor, fat, skinny, sexy, ugly, can’t dance, have a big zit on your nose, grew up rich, grew up poor, you are old, you are young. You get the picture right?
All of that stuff up there means nothing yet many people use those types of things to excuse the fact that they are not living the life of the dreams and doing what they want to do in life.
I’m serious now, for every single “excuse” I wrote above I can find you someone who is happy and very successful that could of used the excuse to fail but chose to succeed and win in their lives instead.
While excuses might make you feel better in the moment, they are like a boat anchor weighing you down and preventing you from going anywhere. Excuses are for losers.
If you have anything in your life right now that you even remotely think of as an excuse as to why you are not succeeding, I want you to do two things:
DROP IT. Unhook that ugly anchor and throw it overboard so you can go and DOMINATE.
Just remember….successful people don’t make excuses, they create RESULTS!
Business Is Like Basketball - You Must Want The Ball
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In Business, You Have To Want The Ball
Business is tough; you are either winning or losing on a daily basis and whether you are the CEO for a fifty billion dollar company or an online marketer working from your home office you need to have the right attitude and mindset in order to grow your business and win. I am going to use a basketball analogy here…you have to want the ball when the game is on the line.
Michael Jordan had it. Kobe Bryant has it. Kevin Garnett has it. When the game is on the line, they want the ball and more often than not, they end up getting the ball and winning the game. There are those other players out there, they don’t want to take a chance on missing the game winning shot, they don’t want to make any waves, they would rather someone else take the risk.
So, which type of person are you most like when it comes to business? Hopefully you want the ball and you want to take risks and make waves. If not, change your mindset or get out of business because you will lose.
Is Your Message Simple To Understand?
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Speaking about marketing and advertising his billion dollar Virgin Brands Company, Billionaire Richard Branson said this:
“Strangely, I think my dyslexia has helped. When I launch a new company, I need to understand the advertising. If I can understand it, then I believe anybody can. Virgin speaks in normal language instead of using phrases that nobody understands, like “financial-service industry.”
Makes sense, no wonder he’s a billionaire. There are so many businesses out there trying to impress people with big or complicated words in their advertising….it does not work.
What you can do today is simplify your message and make sure that everything you do is crystal clear and easy to understand. You will be amazed at how well it works.
Adobe Is Making A Serious Mistake With Ultra
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I already miss Ultra. What is Ultra you ask? It’s a video chromakey program (the best there is) that was created by a company called “Serious Magic”. You could get amazing keys with Ultra which really helped you get amazing looking video online.
A few years ago, Adobe bought Serious Magic and planned to do more with Ultra, including creating more virtual sets. Unfortunately, Adobe recently announced that they are not going to sell Ultra any longer or create new virtual sets etc.
Big mistake. This was one of the best video products out there.
The question now is, will someone create a product very similar to Ultra? There is lots of opportunity for something like that, especially now.
Three Things You Can Do Today To Help Protect You From The Economy
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Everyone should take steps to protect themselves financially with the economy the way it is right now. Am I scared? No way. I actually believe that the economy is nowhere near as bad as they make it sound on the news and even if it is, there is still a tremendous amount of opportunity out there anyway.
That being said, people are constantly asking me what they should do because they are paralyzed with fear.
First, you must get rid of the fear. Take action on the things you can control and don’t worry about the rest.
Three Things You Can Do Today:
1. Make as much money as you can. Look for lots of ways to make money including Ebay, Craigslist, starting a business, etc. Sometimes you have to spend money to make money and this is definitely a good time to purchase real estate and stocks so you should definitely consider that type of purchase.
2. Save as much money as possible. Make sure that you are responsible with your money. This step is easy to do but it’s also easy not to do.
3. Learn a new skill. By learning a new skill, especially if it’s a skill that is in demand or that could help you in business, you make yourself more valuable to the marketplace and you get a little more control and leverage with every new skill that you learn.
Does Pure Digital Get New Media?
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Pure Digital, you know them, they make those really cool Flip Video Recorders that are all the rage these days.
For quite some time now, the Flip Video has had a major online evangalist singing their praises and promoting their product. This evangalist’s name is Jim Kukral. Heck, he even created a daily video blog called “The Daily Flip” that he films with a Flip.
I have been following Jim for the past year or so and I was surprised to discover that the guys over at Flip have pretty much done nothing for Jim at all. In my opinion, Jim has done more to promote their product than any one person…by far.
Just last week, Jim put the Flip in the hands of very well known Guy Kawasaki. This is more great publicity for the Flip so I am thinking Pure Digital might send Jim 20-30 of these as a thank you and in hopes that we will promote them even more.
Do they send him 20?, 30? Nope. They sent him 1. That’s right, just 1.
Does Pure Digital get New Media? What more could you want when you have raving evangalist fans that promote and sell product for you? If it was my Company, I would have sent Jim about 50 Flips along with t-shirts and other promotional items, and a gift card to a nice restaurant to boot. Do you think that might have gotten them some good press and more Flip sales? Absolutely.
I don’t get it.
The Bailout Failed - What You Should Do Now
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So the bailout failed and the economy is not great right now. What are you going to do, bury your head in the sand? NO! This is the time to fight, this is the time to buy, this is the time to start a business.
Seize the moment. Many people are paralyzed by fear right now, this is the time that the leaders and the winners in life step up and take what they deserve. Start that business, show people it can be done anytime, anywhere. As Nike says, JUST DO IT.
