What really makes customers grumpy?

The Australian consumer watchdog, CHOICE, has just released a survey detailing exactly what drives customers crazy. The overwhelming winner was hidden costs and I have to say I agree totally. There is nothing worse than being told a price only to find out that there are hidden charges and you have to put your hand in pocket for more money.

The reality is that any business that fails to be completely forthright about how much an item or a service will cost (and this means the full cost), is being misleading. Why do they do it? Because they are looking for an unfair competitive advantage or they are scared that if they give the customer the real cost they won’t make the purchase. Whatever the reason, it is a sure fire way to lose customers and in some instances it is illegal.

CHOICE identified the following specific irritations that will drive customers awa:

• Hidden fees and hidden commissions
• Not including GST in quoted prices (which has been shown to be misleading and deceptive in the Courts)
• Extra charges that were only made obvious after the purchase
• Ongoing costs that were not made clear at the time of purchase
• Costs creep, where costs rise on a project or service but the consumer was not made aware that the costs could rise.

So what is the moral to the story?

Simply make sure that your business discloses the FULL cost of any products or services that you offer in a way that is open and completely clear to your customers. The more upfront you are with your customers the better it will be for your business in the long run and any sales you make will be “clean” sales, which means that the customer won’t come back to complain. They will get what they expect and most importantly what they are paying for.

Integrity is vital for business success. To build a long term, successful business, you need to build trust with your customers and transparency is an essential part of this process.

For business coaching, marketing consulting or other business success tips, visit www.tafastrack.com.au.

If you want referrals you need to let people know EXACTLY what you do and what you WANT.

A while back I moved out of an office where I had run my marketing business for a few years. The day we were physically putting the boxes into the back of the truck, the lady who ran the business in the office next door came over to say goodbye. I saw her every day and we had one of those nice kind of “how are you going?” relationships. She asked me a question as we were saying goodbye - she asked what it was we actually do?

Now this question almost floored me, especially as we were neighbours for so long, but it made me realise that just because I knew what my business does it certainly doesn’t mean that everyone else knows. And after all, it is our job to let them know, it’s not their job to find out.

This concept under pins the entire word of mouth referral process. How can people possibly refer us if they don’t really know what we do? We need to be proactive in telling people (and by people I mean all people including our family, our friends, our suppliers, our neighbours, our existing customers and anyone else who will listen) exactly what it is that our business does. Assuming that the name says it all is really a little risky.

Further to this most businesses change and evolve over time. They develop new products and services, they expand their area of operation, they stop offering certain things - in other words they change. We all need to make sure we keep this information flowing. The more informed, up to date and aware all of the people are who are in our sphere of influence, the more word of mouth referrals we can and will get.

Most importantly of all, we need to spell out what kind of customers we really want. Define the “PERFECT” customer and let our network know that these are the kind of people we are looking for and we would really appreciate their help in referring these specific kinds of people our business.

Being too vague makes it really hard for friends and fans to recommend your business because they don’t really know what you do or what you want.

The secret weapon in the world of business success is communication. We have so many ways to communicate that it can be a little daunting, but if you want to grow your business through word of mouth referrals, you have to become exceptional at communicating and disseminating information to everyone in your ever expanding network.

For assistance with business coaching or business and marketing consulting, call 07 3040 3588 or email email@tafastrack.com.au.

TA Fastrack Makes Online Reputation Monitoring Easier

TA Fastrack today launched to the industry Fastrack Social Monitor, an online monitoring and reputation management tool with the ability to monitor the strength of brands online.

Fastrack Social Monitor can show businesses exactly what is being said about their brand, industry and competitors within social networks and online communities.

‘Thanks to social media, one angry customer can tarnish your brand's reputation on a local or global scale,” said Mr Adrian Caruso, CEO of TA Fastrack. “One negative post to Twitter, Facebook, Trip Advisor, Urban Spoon or to an e-mail list and people far and wide know about that customer's experience,” said Mr Caruso. 

“Readers might chime in with their own stories, potential customers hear the bad buzz. Soon, you've alienated a giant customer base. The most frightening part? Without monitoring your brand online, you may never even know it,” continued Mr Caruso.

With Fastrack Social Monitor travel, tourism and hospitality businesses will now be able to monitor and effectively control their online reputation. “It’s more than just a piece of software! Fastrack Social Monitor with dashboard access will track sentiment, creates a database of key influencers and allows you to keep on top of the buzz with email and RSS alerts,” said Mr. Caruso.

“There is a huge need for this kind of service in the industry right now and we’ve created the perfect tool to be able to deliver Australian-specific, world-wide content or both,” said Mr Caruso.

Fastrack Social Monitor will allow travel and tourism businesses to never miss a conversation about their brand, as it not only monitors the entire travel, tourism and hospitality website spectrum, it also monitors most newspapers, TV, news websites and social media such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, forums, MySpace, Trip Advisor and much more.

Visit http://www.tafastrack.com/social/monitor/ or call 07 3040 3588 for more information about the Fastrack social monitoring system.

Five Qualities of Top Teams

Over the years, exhaustive research has been done on top teams. There seem to be given characteristics or qualities of peak-performance teams that you can incorporate into your own business.

Here they are:

Shared Goals and Objectives
In a smoothly functioning team, everyone is clear about what the team is expected to accomplish. The goals of the team are shared and discussed by everyone. Each team member gives his or her ideas and input into how the goals and objectives can be best achieved. Each person feels like a part of a larger organization.

Shared Values and Principles
In excellent teams, there is regular discussion about the values, principles, and behaviors that guide the decisions of the team. The leader encourages values such as honesty, openness, punctuality, responsibility for completing assignments, quality.

Shared Plans of Action
In this phase of team building, you go around the table and have each member of the team explain exactly what part of the work he or she is going to accept responsibility for completing. At the end of this discussion, each member knows what every other member is going to be doing and how his or her own work fits in with the work of the team.

Lead the Action
There must always be a clear boss or leader in any organization. Democracy is a fine concept, but it goes only so far in business. Someone must be in command and take charge. And that someone is probably you. On a good team, everyone knows who is in charge. The leader sets an example for the others. The leader becomes the role model.

Continuous Review and Evaluation
In this final phase, the team regularly evaluates its progress from two perspectives. First, is the team getting the results that are expected by its customers or other in the company? In dealing with customers, does the team set up mechanisms to continually ask customers, "how are we doing?"

Bringing the Team Together
One of the most important things you do in building a peak performance organization is to hold regular staff meetings. Bring your people together weekly, at a fixed time, to talk, discuss, catch up on progress, learn how the company is doing, and generally share ideas, opinions, and insights.

Action Exercise
Conduct a values clarification exercise with your entire team. Then mutually agree to live and work by the common values.

For information about business coaching or if you would like to get other business and success tips from TA Fastrack, sign up for our newsletter.

Get your website found with SEO

Many businesses are opting to have a website developed to present their products and services to as wide an audience as possible.

However, having a beautifully designed and presented website does not guarantee an immediate increase of customers begging for your offerings.

The secret is to provide a way that your potential clients can find your website amongst the billions of pages on the internet when they are searching for information when they are considering a project or a purchase.
And of course that secret is the search engines, who, when your potential client types in certain keywords i.e. words that describe your business, display a list of results to the searcher that matches those keywords as closely as possible.

However if you are in the same business as many others, eg: a used car sales business, a workshop, a spare parts house or a marine dealer there may be hundreds of competing businesses who, because they are in the same industry as you, use the same keywords as you do.

This means that all of your competitor's information will be displayed to your prospect as well as yours. Even worse, the number of results displayed at once [on one screen] in most search engine search results is set to 10 by default. This means that your listing may turn up deep into the search engine results. It is a well-known fact that most searchers will not look past page three of the search results; therefore if your listing is displayed after page three there is a good chance that few searchers will ever see it.

There are several ways that you can increase your rankings in the search engines, including Google Adwords, and SEO [search engine optimisation] services. Some SEOs provide a guarantee that your site will be listed in the first one or two pages of Google's search results within six months but they are not shy when it comes to charging for the service. Google Adwords also work but could cost you thousands as you pay for everyone that clicks on your ad in Google's sidebar regardless of the value of the "clicker" to you as a client.

So how do you achieve high rankings - ie: page one in the search engine results without spending a great deal of money.

By taking advantage of the free kicks provided by listing sites on the web, by promotion in Government and Trade association websites, by requesting that your suppliers link to you and by utilising the use of reciprocal links from associates who own websites and who are in the same industry as you but not competitors.

If you would like more information about the TA Fastrack SEO service and how SEO or Adwords can help your business, speak to one of our marketing consultants now on 07 3040 3588.

Get smart!

Creativity is your key to the future. All progress comes about as the result of finding better, faster, cheaper, easier or different ways to do things and this requires the continual honing of your creative thinking skills.

Your Key Job At Work
One of the key functions of the executive is problem solving, which takes up as much as 50 percent of executive time. It can be said with some confidence that your ability to deal with problems creatively and effectively is the key determinant of your success as a manager. It would be hard to imagine an effective executive who could not solve problems and make decisions with a high level of competence.

Step On Your Own Acceleration
I've studied and lectured on creative thinking for years and I've come to the conclusion that there is virtually no problem you cannot solve, no goal you cannot achieve, no obstacle you cannot overcome if you know how to apply the creative powers of your mind, like a laser beam, to cut through every difficulty in your life and your work.

Earn More, Faster
The benefits of functioning with more creativity can be enormous. Each of us wants to earn more money, be promoted faster, and enjoy greater status, prestige and recognition. In most cases however, we can only earn more by producing more or of better quality or cheaper or faster - and this requires doing things differently, using creativity.

Step On Your Own Acceleration
The good news is that creativity is a skill and a talent that can be learned and developed through practice. With this skill, you can dramatically accelerate your personal and professional growth. By sharpening your thinking skills and exercising your natural creative powers, you can multiply the value of your efforts and rapidly increase the quantity and quality of your rewards.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to be more creative.
First, see yourself as a professional problem-solver and look upon every difficulty or challenge as an opportunity to develop your creative powers.

Second, look for problems you can solve and obstacles you can overcome. The more you seek for answers and ideas, the smarter and more creative you become.

Attract and Keep Your Clients Online - write content that is relevant to them

Content is King

It takes more than great pictures to attract and maintain email subscribers. Your content has to planned, written and edited specifically for email delivery and eReading.

You know the old adage: Pictures speak louder than words. Well, this is not always true in the email environment.

According to specialist online research firm Eyetrack, 78% of users look at website text before they look at graphics on the same page.

Stop for a moment and consider your own online behaviour ... I can guarantee you will admit that you go online looking for information and that you scan pages until you find what you want. The web is a jungle and we are all just foraging for what we need!

Writing for an eAudience

So what does all this mean for those of us trying to write for an eAudience?

1. It means that content is king. The world's greatest graphic designer will not save you from the delete button if the content that your reader wants is not front and centre. In fact, overly complex graphics could be a hindrance if your email is slow to download or so large that it crashes your subscribers' email system. Try rebuilding a business relationship after that!
2. Give your audience what they want. Remember, people are scanning for information online and less than 20% of people will read word for word. As you are writing, think less about what you want to say and more about the person who has subscribed to your eNewsletter. Work out what they are looking for and give it to them!
3. Keep it simple. Screen reading is about 25% slower than hard copy, so you need to make your copy easy on the eye and easy on the brain. 50% of your eReaders drop off after 300 words and about 80% by 500 words, so keep your copy short. Use simple sentences and plain language too; would you read Shakespeare off a computer screen?

If you are stuck for content, check with your front line staff. What are they being asked? If it is enough of an issue to bring people to your front counter, or FAQ section, the chances are that it will interest a broader audience.

For the first few issues of your eNewsletter, run your copy by someone who is not involved in the business but is in your target market. Is it readable? Is it interesting? Would they act on the information you have provided? You may not like what you hear, and you may need to rethink your content, but the final product will register more unique opens than your first draft.

For assistance with copywriting or to set up an email marketing system to keep in touch with your customers, speak to TA Fastrack on 07 3040 3588 or visit www.tafastrack.com.au for more details.