SalesVu iPad POS is like one of those big Enterprise Resource Management systems, except that rather than costing you a million dollars, it’s free. You can track payments, mail receipts, post coupons on your customers’ Facebook pages, obtain graphs for different aspects of your business and even get credit cards processed. Click here to read full article.
Austin, TX – May 1, 2012 – Austin-based SalesVu just released its latest mobile payment application, SalesVu 2.0 for iPhone’s and iPad’s. The new update solidifies SalesVu’s technology leadership position as the only mobile payment solution with centralized cloud-based management, reporting, and social media marketing.
According to Pascal Nicolas, SalesVu founder and CEO, SalesVu 2.0 provides more value than most point-of-sale and mobile payment solutions while offering the lowest credit card processing fees. “We listened to thousands of SalesVu users across various retail, restaurant, and services segments and added features designed to help them operate their business more efficiently, securely, and cost effectively,” Nicolas says.
New retail functionality built into SalesVu 2.0 includes the ability to print receipts and scan barcodes for faster transaction processing. Another common request from retailers was the ability for employees to clock-in and out, a feature that SalesVu tied to a complete cloud-based employee timekeeping solution on SalesVu.com. Lastly, retailers will be able to significantly simplify their close-out process with SalesVu’s cash drawer functionality.
Features designed specifically for food service establishments in SalesVu 2.0 include the ability to split checks, print orders to the kitchen, adjust tips at the end of the shift, and receive orders from the restaurant’s website. While most online ordering solutions only send email notifications, SalesVu also displays the order right on the point-of-sale app for immediate processing, allowing smaller businesses to be as efficient as larger chains
Service businesses, according to Nicolas, were an important driver in many of the functionality enhancements built into version 2.0. He notes that there is one thing that beauty shops, massage therapists, and plumbers have in common: they work by appointment. SalesVu 2.0 routes appointments from a business’ website directly to the SalesVu app on the iPhone and iPad and allows business owners to take a partial deposit at the time of the reservation and process the balance once the service has been completed. The mobile payment solution also added invoicing and recurring billing, which allows service-based professionals such as attorneys and consultants to set up monthly credit card payments in addition to processing face-to-face transactions.
The launch of SalesVu 2.0 will also now include the application and credit card reader at no cost to businesses. What’s more, SalesVu’s credit card processing fees in the U.S. are the lowest of any mobile payment solution at a flat 2.7% rate for both swiped and keyed-in transactions. In Canada SalesVu’s rates vary from 1.73% to 3.26% depending on card type, which is significantly lower than the rates Intuit recently announced for the Canadian market.
With complete point-of-sale functionality, social media promotion capabilities, daily deal ROI analysis, enterprise-level sales and inventory reporting, Nicolas is confident SalesVu 2.0 has a clear advantage in the mobile payment race.
“We looked at Square and others but decided to go with SalesVu,” says a senior manager for a Texas-based dessert chain. “The application’s ease of use, cloud-based analytics, and multi-store management capabilities made it an easy choice.” The dessert chain recently started rolling out SalesVu 2.0 to its 38 stores across 11 states.
To see a demo of SalesVu 2.0 new features, visit www.SalesVu.com.
Hi I’m Dave Manzer founder of PR over Coffee. PR over Coffee is a monthly meet up, where we bring small businesses, and non-profits together to come and listen to news professionals from TV stations, from daily periodicals, from newspapers, magazines. Early on we were a fan of Square, but we quickly found out that that dongle is difficult to use and it always didn’t take the swipe from the credit card. So about two months ago, we ran across an iPhone and iPad POS application called SalesVu. Immediately took an interest to it and downloaded it very easily, actually it’s free from the itunes store. Immediately I could see value in SalesVu in helping us do our business better. What it allowed us to do is to begin to set up different customer categories. I could set up a price list and find the price point and it was ready for us to swipe. It also allows me to a convenient back end on the internet where I can access all the information and I can begin to find out sales information based on customers, based on inventory items, I can do all the tracking or reporting that I can possibly imagine. So I just can’t say enough about SalesVu. Now I have a much greater peace of mind when it comes to actually taking customer transactions and credit cards.
Hi I’m Kayleigh from Evie Evan, we sell beauty products and services in the store and also at events. We needed a way to process payments anywhere but most of the mobile solutions we found operated like a very basic credit card terminal. Finally we found SalesVu, which allowed us to manage all our payment devices (iPhones and iPads) from a simple website. Here we can view real time reports, manage inventory, change prices, and more. It communicates with our SalesVu iPad POS terminals every five minutes so our entire operation is always up to date. All our products and coupons are loaded here, something we couldn’t do with the other solutions. It’s the only app that allows us to track cash, check, and credit card! The actual card reader is a lot more steady and secure, and the rates are lower! SalesVu is really easy to use. The support is great in case we ever have any questions. We love SalesVu, it really helped our business.
This is the third and final post in our three-part series on How to Get More Referrals. Check out the first post here and the second post here.
What does this mean?
To answer this you first need to understand the psychology of referring, from the perspective of the person doing the referring.
A referral in essence puts social capital on the line. A person refers you because he wants to simultaneously help out someone in his network, and he wants to look good doing it — that is, he needs to know that the referral will work out well. Because in essence, when someone refers you, he is saying to his network, “I want you to trust this person, and I want you to trust me that this is someone good.”
If he does that and it works out badly, then he has egg on his face. Thus the risk.
So then your job, once you’ve gotten to a point of doing outstanding work, providing amazing service, and building a referral system in place, is to make referring you very easy — as in almost completely risk-free.
Here’s are a few ideas to help you do that.
Yes, you can incentivize referrals. This usually works better when you are dealing with a customer, but it could work with a client as well.
The bare bones approach of it with a client is basically this:
You pay for a customer.
That means if a referral source refers someone to you, and that referred lead converts into a customer, you pay the referrer.
It makes sense, because if you consider the cost of customer acquisition, this is a very small price to pay.
Let’s say you run an event planning business. And you know that typically, an engagement with one client leads to an average of three engagements through the year.
Well, if a typical engagement brings in $5,000, then you know that each customer is worth about $15,000 to you (3 engagements through the year at $5,000/engagement). So you could strike up a deal with a potential referral source to pay them the value of the customer’s invoice if they convert. You pay $5,000, and then make $10,000.
Any CEO or marketer or ad man on the planet will tell you if you can spend 1 dollar and make 2, then that’s a business. If you scale that out, the sky is the limit.
Another incentive structure is to incentivize your customers to refer their friends to you. This usually takes the form of “Refer four people to us and you get a year of free haircuts.”
ING Direct, where I bank, will pay me $100 if I refer a friend. That’s because ING knows how much each customer is worth, and you can bet it’s a lot more than $100.
Another way to mitigate the risk on a referral is to make it clear that your initial meeting is a 100% free consultation. That way the referrer doesn’t get stuck telling someone to trust you, and now their friend has to put up with a hard sell.
As always, make sure the person referring you can easily point a potential referral to your work, via a website, a portfolio, etc.
Okay. Let’s get into how to ask.
The first thing to do is set the expectation at the very beginning of an engagement that if you do a great job, and they love the work,
Here’s how you do that:
YOU: “Great, I’m really looking forward to getting my hands dirty on this project. At the end of the project, if I do an outstanding job and you just love the results, I’m happy to offer similar results to people that you know. Assuming you love the work, is that something we can talk about?”
CLIENT/CUSTOMER: Sure, of course.
You’ve given a highly conditional statement (“If… then…”) which basically makes it easy for someone to say yes, and you’ve established from the very beginning that referrals are something that you do.
So. You’ve set up the expectation. Awesome. Now you’ve completed the project brilliantly, provided superb service, and you’ve delivered it to your customer. Whether that’s a new website, a wedding cake, a customized car, whatever. What do you say?
First, reiterate the value you’ve given them:
YOU: “So to recap quickly, since we’ve worked together, you have seen X result to help you with X benefit, Y result to help you with Y benefit, and Z result to help you with Z benefit. Is there anyone you know and trust, who is also looking to achieve X, Y, or Z, or you think could use a hand with their xyz [area where you provide value]?”
And then:
YOU: “Would you be willing to introduce me to him?”
Here’s a real-life example. Let’s say you’re a physical trainer, and you’ve come to the end of your six sessions with a client.
YOU: Well, Terry, great work today. Since we’ve worked together on your health and fitness, you have dropped ten pounds of body fat, which helps you have increased energy, greater health, and look great in clothes. You’ve increased your bench press by 20 lbs, which has improved your core strength and protects you against injuries. And we’ve improved your run time by 2 minutes, which has widely positive increases across your entire body, including increased energy and better brain function. Not bad. If you’re open to it, is there anyone you know and trust who is unsatisfied with their health and is looking to make a change?”
CLIENT: Oh yeah, there’s blah blah blah…
YOU: Would you be willing to introduce me to him?
I touched on this in the last post, but a powerful way to increase your referrals is to create a referral network.
That means you make an agreement with a group of other business owners to refer each other business.
If you’re a trainer or gym owner, striking up a referral network with:
Seems like a no-brainer.
Here’s how you do it:
YOU: “So one thing I’ve been doing over the past 4 months is really connecting and helping out complimentary businesses, in order to build a referral network. I’ve already got John Smith, owner over at XYZ Acme, Peter Smith over at ABC Acme, and we’re excited about this. I wanted to invite you to join it. It basically works like this:
– If someone comes in and you sense that they would benefit from my service, you refer them to me. I’ll do the same. And Peter, and John will do the same. That means where once we had zero people referring us, now you’ve got 4 or 5 professionals referring people to you. We can track who comes from where by using these little cards I printed up. What do you say?”
Any business owner on the planet would be thrilled with this arrangement.
This ties in loosely with the above point, but you can increase your referrals by providing a free service to a complimentary business.
If you are a health food caterer for example, you can partner with a local gym and offer 1 free meal for each new gym member. The gym owner loves that because that’s a calue-add on what he can offer, and it exposes you to THE GYM OWNERS ENTIRE CUSTOMER BASE, which is a huge swath of highly qualified leads.
This may very well be the most epic post on referrals ever written in the history of the internet. But do not just read it. Implement it. Go forth and prosper.
This is the second post in a three-part series on How to Get More Referrals. You can see the first part here.
Now we can assume you’re doing great work and delivering killer customer service.
How do you now get referrals consistently?
The first thing to do is to set up a system whereby you no longer have to remember to get a referral or kick yourself for not doing it — it becomes automatic.
Here’s what I mean.
You very likely already have systems in place in your business. You may have a set questionnaire your gym clients fill out to asses their physical condition. You may have a quick audit you run on your accounting clients. You may have a standard greeting you want your employees to use inside your retail boutique.
Well just like you’ve got those systems in place, now it’s time to add referral generation into the mix.
This is an automatic process designed to provide you with more leads and more business.
Most people think of getting referrals as coming at the end of an engagement — that is, after they’ve been paid.
That is problematic though, because you’ve just had a fair exchange of value. You did the work, and then you got paid, and now you’re asking for MORE? It puts off clients.
However, it’s quite possible to get more referrals and get paid, if you ask for referrals a) in the right way, and b) at the right time.
Here’s a quick diagram I put together to illustrate this idea.
There are other ways of course beyond asking (and we’ll get into the specifics of asking in a moment).
Over at Passive Panda, I’ve read of an insurance agent who generates referrals and new leads by the following:
After he successfully closes a client, he goes to their neighborhood, and knocks on the doors of his new client’s neighbors. He then tells them a little script, (“Hi there, I’m John Smith, and I just helped Mike Johnson protect his family and wealth. I wanted to give you this little refrigerator magnet — it has my contact information on it. That way, if something were to happen while Mike’s on vacation or away from the house, you can give me a call. I just want to make sure that they are taken care of. Would that be alright?”)
You can read about about a variety of over referral systems over at Duct Tape Marketing.
There you’ll read a story about a remodeling contractor who, after completing a project, throws a small party for his clients — a little open house party. He makes a small presentation at the very end, passes out cards, and the photos he takes there go on his website and postcard mailings.
What’s important is not so much what you do, but the fact that you have a system. You know exactly when you will ask for the referral, and you know exactly what you will say. Once you have a system, then it’s just a matter of testing different approaches and tweaking it.
IMMEDIATELY ACTIONABLE TACTIC: Decide on a referral system and WRITE. IT. DOWN. Maybe it’s asking before you present the invoice. Maybe it’s throwing a party or visiting neighbors. Whatever it is, write it down, and place it in your business cycle as a specific step.
Okay, now you’ve figured out how to 1) do great work and 2) provide outstanding customer service that sets positive expectations. This week you’ll be getting part two of our three-part series on building referrals. Part 2 covers how to bake a referral generation system right into your business cycle, so you never have to think about it again.
Referrals are a vital part of your local business, whether you’re offering a service or a product. The lead that comes in through referrals generally needs what you have to offer, enters your business cycle with a lot of trust baked in already, and reflects a similar customer profile of the person who referred him.
That’s great, because as you get better and more customers, that means you’ll be getting even better and even more customers — if you know how to take advantage of referrals.
Here’s a primer on what you can do, step-by-step, to get more referrals for your business.
At first glance, that headline might look like some mumbo-jumbo inspirational stuff that makes you momentarily feel good, but then a second later fades away and leaves you thinking, “Okay, sure. But HOW??!!”
Fret not. You’re about to get a step-buy-step guide in how to be instantly more referable.
Whether you’re walking dogs and giving their owners the peace of mind knowing that Fido is getting his exercise and getting top care, or you’re a baker and creating sugary gifts to make a child’s birthday party his best one yet, or you’re a masseuse and you’re giving stressed out people a much needed break from the daily grind, you have got to be delivering the best work in your niche.
The problem with that is that we, as people, generally find ourselves fault-less, and often assume we are in fact delivering the best work that we can. This may or not be true. And if you haven’t been consciously improving yourself at what you do, odds are you aren’t delivering the best work in your niche. Here’s how to find out:
Ask yourself: “When was the last time I consciously tried to improve what I do?”
This could be picking up a book with the latest Photoshop techniques in them and using them on a project. It could be attending a seminar from a respected industry expert and applying what you learned. It could be even having a lunch with a mentor and laying out what you’re doing right now, and asking where you can improve. Or it could even be asking for specific feedback from your customers about their experience, listening to that feedback, and then implementing it in a strategic way.
If you’ve done something along those lines in the last two weeks, then congrats, you are ahead of the curve. Chances are you’re delivering above-average work.
If you can’t remember the last time that you did one of those activities in your business, then I’ve got bad news. You’re coasting. You’re on autopilot and that’s a dangerous place to be. The best thing for you to do — TODAY — is find some resource (a book, a friend, a magazine, an online course, an instructional video) and improve what you do.
But here’s another question to determine where your work fits in the market.
Ask yourself: “Who is the number one person in my niche, in my market?”
If you answer, “Me,” (and that’s definitely true based on real figures and metrics) then that is awesome, very good. You very likely already consistently improve yourself to provide top-quality work.
If the answer is, “I’m not sure,” then that indicates a problem. If you’re a hair stylist or salon owner, and you’re not sure who the number one person is in your niche, and you know it’s not you, then you’re missing out, and you’re trying to operate your business with zero external reference points.
For example, if you run a gym, it’s probably at xyz size, with xyz members, providing xyz services and options. That’s great. But you also need to know who in your industry or niche is doing far better than you. Then, DO NOT try to change to BECOME that person or business (Pepsi can never be Coca-Cola and has been wise not to try) — instead LEARN from that person or business and implement strategies they are using in your own business, your way.
What underlying philosophies power what they do?
What frameworks or systems do they rely on?
How do they approach every stage of their business and interactions with their customers?
This article by Atul Gawande, a surgeon and writer for The New Yorker, digs into this concept from a slightly different angle. He’s talking about coaching, and how strange it is that the best tennis players in the world have coaches, while attorneys, doctors, and business people do not.
The same is true here. If you’re not doing the best work in your niche, then you’ve got to find some resource to help you make adjustments and improve. It could be a book, a seminar, a mentor, a coach, or the careful observation of a highly successful example from your niche.
But the first step to referral business is to do great work.
IMMEDIATELY ACTIONABLE TACTIC: Do 1 thing to improve your business today — schedule a session with a mentor, order a book, sign up for a seminar.
Beyond the simple fact of delivering great work, there is a host of activities and behaviors that may be even more important than the work itself. This group of behaviors is called, in scientific terms, “everything else.” It’s also in a sense customer service, but should go beyond that.
If you can nail this, you are guaranteed to get a referral if you ask for it (and know that “asking” can take many forms — from actually asking, to a more complex referral system you have in place).
It’s the how to your what. How you communicate. How you lead the interaction with your customer. How you deliver. How you end each engagement.
For example, you could make the world’s greatest pizza, but if it’s consistently late, if you’re rude and unreliable, if you leave it up to your customer to know where to sit in the restaurant, etc, etc., then you will fail.
The way you set expectations, the way you deliver your product or service is critical, and it’s a part of your marketing.
I’ve written here about rocking customer service, but there are other areas where this applies as well. For example, I was in a U-Haul recently. There was no signage as to where U-Haul customers should park, so I drove around the block once before I figured it out — we were to park with the inventory around the back. When I got inside, the lady working behind the counter never made eye contact with me and just asked if I had my contract. So I walked back to the car to get my contract. When I brought it back, she didn’t say anything at all, just took it and started pecking at the keyboard.
At the end of the transaction I had one more step. After I transferred everything out of the U-Haul, I had to head back inside and finish up. I walked in and got to the counter and the same thing happened — “Do you have your contract?”
I walked back again, and brought it back and was so frustrated by the fact of having to run around chasing a piece of paper, it ruined the entire experience. The fix could be a simple sign—”Don’t forget your contract”—on the way to the counter. I could tell it was a common occurrence because of her jaded attitude towards the problem. But instead of having a sign which would solve the problem entirely, this manager decided the fix for her was a really poor attitude towards her stupid customers who didn’t know they needed their contract.
Here’s a reverse example. IKEA. You get free bags to tote around. You get plenty of signs and tips. You even get a computer station in the warehouse section to look up a chair if you forgot the numbers from the showroom.
Here’s a quick way to assess where you are:
IMMEDIATELY ACTIONABLE TACTIC: Assess your ability or your business’s ability to set highly positive expectations. If it’s not great, pick 1 area to improve and focus on that area for 2 weeks.
Okay, now you’ve figured out how to 1) do great work and 2) provide outstanding customer service that sets positive expectations. This week you’ll be getting part two of our three-part series on building referrals. Part 2 covers how to bake a referral generation system right into your business cycle, so you never have to think about it again.
Hi, my name is Jen Ardill and I’m the owner of Purse and Clutch. I’m really excited about the possibility of being able to accept credit cards at the Farmers Market. A lot of times people will bring cash to buy their produce for the week, but they‘re not necessarily have cash for impulse buys. I originally thought I was going to use Square, and kind of looked into that and actually ordered it and then I realized that all you can do is type in the numbers instead of actually having your prices entered. So it seemed really limiting. So I tried using SalesVu’s iPhone and iPad POS application. So I really like how easy this setup is. I can choose separate categories so I can choose my categories for scarves, and I have two different types of scarves. I can say how many scarves that I have. So I know that I have eleven scarves and when one sells it’s going to take it off of my inventory. I have all my inventory already put in. So all I have to do whenever someone comes is type that they wanted an apron and it also keeps all the inventory online, so I don’t have to write down or try to keep track of everything because it’s already online. Another feature that I really like is that I can email out a receipt so not only does it keep track of their emails so I can contact them later, but they also have a record of the purchase that they just made. So it just makes it that much more secure and gives people that peace of mind. So I think it’s going to make things really easy today and I’m excited to get started. I’m really happy that I decided to go with SalesVu POS System instead of with Square or another credit card reader. I feel like it, first of all, the apparatus that is comes with is much sturdier than Square which is just a small thing up top. I can really get a good grip and slide it across. Also I notice that when I was at the Farmers Market it never shows the credit card number, so it’s much more secure then with Square, and I want to make sure my customers feel very secure as they hand me over their credit card that they don’t have to worry about identity theft or someone taking their number because it’s not even possible. I really like that. So I’ve logged into SalesVu.com, and I’m going to look at the reports tab. To look at my sales by product, just to see how I did at the Farmers Market yesterday. It’s nice that I don’t have to input anymore data, but it’s all been collected on my phone already and it goes straight here. So I can look at the date range, I’m going to look at yesterday, and I started 8am in the morning, and I ended, we’ll just say to be safe, the whole day. I can choose that I can look at products or categories by level, but I’m just going to choose products, select all, and in the future if I expand, I can show by specific store or employee, I’m just going to choose all for right now. Then I’m going to submit it. I’ve chosen to do a pie chart, although I can choose other graphs as well. Here I can see just by glancing at it, how much I’ve made per product. If I were to use another product like Square for my card reader, I would have to enter all this manually into a spread sheet and have to make a graph of my own, and this saves me so much time. The next thing I want to look at is my order form. Again, I’m going to choose, looking at yesterday, starting in the morning until yesterday in the evening, and then submit. So it’s going to show me all of my orders, so I can expand one. I can see that this scarf is $24 and I have the person’s signature, so that I can refund it or re-email the receipt. So here I’m at my inventory tab, I can view or adjust my inventory. Here you see I have everything with the quantity that is updated with the purchases that were made at the Farmers Market. So I can always know just at a glance when I need to put in my next inventory order with my wholesaler. I can look at my inventory by categories, so I can see that I have five handkerchiefs left, and I have eleven scarves. It’s so nice to just be able to view everything at a glance and that it’s the same setup that’s on my phone that I was looking at the Farmers Market. Square would never allow me to do anything like this because isn’t an inventory option. Simply with Square, you just enter in the number. Last thing we’re going to look at is the customer database that it automatically makes. Here I have emails, and if I wanted to go in and fill in extra information I could. I can choose to view the history of something. So I can see, okay, this person is not a repeat customer, so I can really learn a lot of information about my customers from right here on the customer tab. It also shows the total amount that I sold, I can also export these things and information if I want to get to the information in any other way.
SalesVu helps you improve your customer service by making credit card processing really, really easy. Check us out.
As more and more business transactions get both conducted and rated on an increasingly social web, customer service is now more important than ever. In days of yore, a customer’s dissatisfaction usually found an audience of her friends and family. Now, no joke, THOUSANDS of people can hear about a negative experience, and not just hear about, but tweet it, like it, share it, email it—with the click of a button.
TechCrunch recently highlighted startling insights from the Customer Experience Impact 2010 report from RightNow. The most important takeaway: 82% of consumers in the U.S. said they’ve stopped doing business with a company because of a poor customer service experience.
And that’s a real shame, not just in a “let’s be nice to each other” kind of way (though we should of course). It’s a shame because poor customer service has a direct and significant impact on the bottom line, especially when considering customer lifetime value and the power of word-of-mouth marketing.
So what can you do to ensure you don’t suffer the same effects as this or this?
Make amazing customer service a priority of your business. Here’s how.
When was the last time you walked through your business, either for real in the physical world, or as a rehearsal in your mind, from the point of view of your customer? From being unaware of you, to aware, to walking in, to shopping, to buying, to leaving?
This exercise is important because as the business owner, you are so wrapped up in your own concerns, it’s easy to take for granted the experience of your customer on an individual level. The moment you do that, or, if you’re reading this and you realize you’ve never consciously considered that process, you’re in trouble. There are critical blindspots that need attention.
If you own a restaurant, go out to eat at a competitor and take notes. Where do you as a customer feel like your needs are left unmet? Where are your needs not just met, but you are delighted?
If you own a dog walking business, think through and write down the steps someone goes through as they meet you and hire you. How does it start? Where are you? Where are they? What happens?
If you have a salon, book yourself a haircut. Walk in. Where do you sit? Would you like a coffee, tea? Reading material? One salon I went to in Miami provided little netbooks for browsing the web. Later, when I moved out of the city, I deliberately delayed getting a haircut for one month so I could visit that salon when I was back in town.
You want to go through and experience your business as just a regular customer off the street, so you can see where you can blow her mind and delight her.
Articulate what the customer experience is, start to finish, step-by-step.
Here’s an example:
Once you’ve worn their shoes, it’s time to get inside their minds. Take out a piece of paper or open up a word document and answer the following questions:
For example, the main benefit of a salon.
You own a salon. What do you sell?
It’s not haircuts. It’s confidence. Looking great. Standing out.
What are some frustrations your ideal target customer might have?
“I’m tired of stylists who don’t listen to me or understand what I’m trying to say.”
“My hair color constantly fades, or I’m never happy with the way it looks.”
“I can’t recreate the look at home.”
And so forth. Knowing these frustrations, what can you do to immediately stand out from your competition? Provide the solution to these frustrations.
Once you know what your ideal target customer truly wants, you can overdeliver on what he or she wants and win loyal customers for life.
(Finding out what she wants is as simple as asking. Keep your eye out for a post in the future that digs deep into how to do this in a way that makes both you the business owner happy and doesn’t weird out the customer or seem strange.)
So what does your ideal target customer really want when she enters your store or otherwise does business with you?
We all have that friend who is consistently late. Or only calls when he needs something. Or nine times out of ten cancels at the last minute. Or doesn’t really listen to you and just talks about himself.
You eventually phase those kinds of people out of your life. And that’s because that person’s behavior demonstrates values that you don’t find appealing. If someone is consistently late, she is saying, “I don’t respect your time,” and one of her values (unconsciously or consciously) is “My time is more important than others’ time.”
Your business is the same way. Each interaction you have with a customer expresses the values of your business.
The key is to 1). know what those values are and 2). translate those values into concrete actions that express those values.
This story about the Ritz Carlton has been passed around quite a bit, because it perfectly captures this idea. It’s interesting because the Ritz is very value-driven. And it finds ways to express those values in concrete actions.
Tony Hsieh is famous because of this .
What values drive your business?
How can you express those values in a concrete way?
There are countless little tips online, lists of 50, of 75, of 101 little tips. These range from the obvious — “Smile!” — to the less obvious — “Make sure signing the receipt is NOT the last exchange a customer has with you before leaving your shop.” But all of those tips are meaningless if they aren’t coming from a framework that you truly understand. Or if you just put lipstick on a pig and try the tips out without knowing what your customer actually experiences, what they want, and what values you’re demonstrating as a business.
You are busy. You have financial goals you want to hit. Time and money is precious. So you need to save time and make small, powerful changes.
The next step is to identify just 3 key areas to improve. Why three?
We say three because there are a million things that you could do — and as a result, you do nothing. By focusing on three, you keep it psychologically very do-able.
So what are your three? Perhaps it’s the way you greet your customers. Perhaps its listening. Maybe it’s figuring out a way to turn a mundane step in the process (waiting for your appointment) into a delight (providing a complimentary cup of tea).
Whatever you think, limit yourself to three areas. What are they?
Now that you’ve got your three areas, you just need to convert them into concrete behaviors or policies you can implement.
For example, if you want to improve the way you listen to your customers, then that can translate to making sure you maintain eye contact with them, possibly even noting their eye color.
If you want to make your store more welcoming, then set a policy of warmly greeting new customers and welcoming back returning customers.
If you’d like to be a business known for its appreciation of its customers, set up a simple system of including a little token of gratitude in the customer’s shopping bag, perhaps a note, or a chocolate.
By articulating these changes specifically, you ensure you’ll actually stick to it. And then you’ll be on the path to truly delighting your customers.
What 3 concrete changes can you test today?
These are just some considerations and ways to rock customer service. What other suggestions do you have for delighting your customers?
SalesVu helps you improve your customer service by making credit card processing really, really easy. Check us out.
Hello, welcome to the SalesVu Point of Sale and Mobile Payment Management Portal. Today I will show you how to create a new product and how to sync it to all your mobile devices. After you click on the “Products and Services” icon from the homepage, click the Add button here. Enter a name for the product, you can choose to add a description, you can select a category for the new product. You may type it in manually or you may select from a list of those you’ve already created. Then input the selling price. Next, you select the tax bracket the product falls under. You can either select from existing tax brackets or add new ones. You can choose to have SalesVu automatically update your inventory whenever this product is sold by checking this box. This will take you back to the categories and products screen, which will now display your newly created product. All changes from the SalesVu.com management portal will automatically sync with your mobile devices every five minutes. You can also touch the “Sync with SalesVu.com” button to force the update. Now let’s sell the product. When you create a new order, SalesVu will allow you to navigate your products and services by category or alphabetically. So now let’s add the product we just created to our new order where we can increase the quantity or delete the product. SalesVu allows us to track cash, credit card, check, and gift card transactions. Credit card transactions can be swiped or entered manually. For transactions without predefined products, SalesVu allows you to customize the transaction amount. Let’s close this order using a cash transaction either with exact amount of making change. Once the order is closed, we can easily email a receipt to the customer. Now that we have completed the order, let’s go back to the online portal where we can remotely monitor our sales in real time. Let’s go to the Orders tab to view the sale we just made. We can view orders from a specific time and date range, or use the quick pick tab to select a predefined time period. This screen allows us to either view the summary of the order or expand it to see the details. Now let’s go to the Reports tab where we can either create new reports or view predefined reports. One of the predefined reports is a line chart of our aggregated sales across all devices for the last 30 days. Another predefined report shows all the products sold today, with their quantity and sales amount. We can also see a bar graph of sales by categories, a table of all closed orders, or a pie chart showing our product mix. Thank you for viewing this instructional video, please check regularly for more SalesVu tutorials.
