The,Key,Element,That,Will,Make DIY The Key Element That Will Make or Break Your Business

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;mso-style-noshow:yes;mso-style-parent:"";mso-padding-alt:0in When starting a new work at home business it is very easy to become consumed by it. We spend so much time trying to get the business up and running that we may end up becoming burned out and lose our motivation. There is so much to learn and

When you made the leap into ecommerce, did you realize the importance of providing top notch customer service, satisfaction and support? These factors and your ability to deliver them rapidly and efficiently directly impact your credibility and ultimately your success.Too Many online businesspeople assume that because this is a "digital age" and the Internet is a "digital medium", their customers expect and prefer to interact with their company via digital, automated means.While it is crucial to the success of your online business to automate certain time consuming, tedious but necessary tasks, it is extremely important that you know right from the start that your customers do not belong in that "time consuming" category.You must always remember that without your customers you have no business. You must be readily available to your customers when they need you. You must avoid trapping your customers in voice mail hell, late responses to emails and phone messages or worse yet no response at all. Exceptional customer service breeds satisfied customers which in turn produces repeat business for you and even new business fromreferrals.When you have an extremely well funded organization, adding a customer service solution to your business is as simple as finding the appropriate staff to handle the job and then deciding on the right tool to handle the customer service requests.But, what if you are a one (or two) man operation. Can you really do everything that a well funded company with a full-time customer service staff can do to keep customers happy? Yes, you certainly can and if you leverage the correct technology, you may be able to do a more efficient job than those larger companies are able to do.If you run a company, regardless of size, you should consider implementing some of these unique tools and techniques to increase the productivity of your customer service staff.My small company, Goldbar Enterprises is run by my wife and I, our affiliate manager, and a team of expert developers. We have been blessed by much success which we attribute not only to our hard work and perseverance and the quality of our products and services but a huge chunk of our success is directly tied to our exceptional customer care. We're not happy until our customers are happy. Our business has become a lot more than a full-time job. We wear several different hats: marketers, deal makers, customer service, technical support, and business web site providers. To avoid extra work, we set up our members only marketing supersite, The Ultimate Marketers Resource ( http://success.goldbar.net ) to be completely automated from the start. We spent months working out the technical details so that a customer could purchase membership, receive his/her login details and gain access in under 10 minutes time.The system works great, but customers naturally expect and deserve top notch support. Our customers get all the help, advice and consulting they need as part of the package. We knew that thousands of members would be difficult to support but we also knew that if we put our heads together we could come up with a plan to use existing technology to help assist us with the support and still keep our overhead to a minimum.To implement a basic support program, you should have an email address devoted solely to support requests. This will allow you to set priority for these requests so they do not slip through the cracks.Moreover, your customers, like you, expect to receive a timely response to their questions. If it's impossible to respond within minutes of receiving an email, at least get it done some time that same day. Your customer will not hesitate to take his/her business elsewhere.If you know what ICQ is, I highly suggest that you implement it so as to enable your customers to access your support person when they are online so that requests can be handled instantly. If you do not have ICQ and need to learn more about it, visit Mirabilis to download it free.In addition to ICQ, your support program should include new web based tools that can help you to manage and fulfill customer support requests.One of these web based tools that we highly recommend you implement is Humanclick. This tool allows you to interact live with your customers on your web site. If you are not available your customers can use Humanclick's convenient "leave a message" function to do just that, leave you a message.Due to the number of technical support issues that may crop up when operating an e-business you can become overwhelmed if you do not have a well trained, technical staff. If you are fortunate enough to have a technically sound staff you can offer support on your own site.If you are not technical and do not have a staff, have no fear, now you can utilize an awesome service from Expertcity. Expertcity is a company that offers free and low cost technical support for anyone right over the web. The service is great and the people there know what they are doing. Many companies are now outsourcing their technical support issues to them.Once you have these mechanisms in place, you should then set up a call tracking program that you can use to keep track of your support requests and their status. This can easily be set up using a spreadsheet or database program. Many programs may even have templates that you can use to set up a customized call tracking manager. This is important as it will save you time and also let you track the progress of requests until they are completely resolved. The goal is always to strive for complete customer satisfaction. If you can develop a reputation as a company that supports its customers, you will be well on your way to developing a successful Internet business. The web offers many free and low cost options that can be easily set up to allow you or your staff the ability to excel at this very important and integral part of your business. Article Tags: Customer Service, Technical Support