Customers are now in charge. Thanks to the growth of the Web, it is easier than ever to comparison shop and switch from one business to another with the click of a mouse. However, research has found that in the online market, customers yearn for trustworthiness more than ever.

Customer relationships are a company’s most valuable asset - worth more everything else combined as no customers = no business. Getting and keeping more customers who stay with you longer is crucial. If your customers are loyal to your business, they will be much more likely to choose you over your competitors. Loyal customers will be much more likely to tell their friends about you. Loyal customers spend more and bring in even more new customers. Loyalty is immensely valuable. Research has shown that a 5 percent increase in customer retention rates results in a 25 percent to 95 percent increase in profits.

It’s easy to say customers are our most important asset but turning CRM strategy into bottom-line results is hard work. It means winning the battle for customers’ hearts and minds every day, with each interaction at every customer touch point. Long-standing relationships only arise from trust gained over many transactions and by customers’ belief that the company wishes to keep them around rather than drive them away.

Creating a customer-focused company starts with the definition of a CRM strategy, which must then be filled out with new work processes, organizational changes, and even a revamped corporate culture.

To create customers for life, customers who will become advocates with the perception (and don’t forget that perception is reality) they need to believe that you do what’s best for your customers, not just what’s best for your bottom line.

To do that you need to:

1) Find out what customers want and know what you are providing matches that. Do not start with the bottom line. Profit and cash flow are residuals of attention to the needs and preferences of your customers. Of course, profits are crucial. But long-term cash flow and profits come from regular customers.

2) Be honest and keep things simple, listen, communicate openly and keep your promises. Deliver what you say you will. Far too many businesses focus on ways to keep customers, only to lose sight of the fact that their product or service simply isn’t what it should be. Make certain that the core of what you do is deserving of long-term customer loyalty, and then look for ways to nurture it. Make it simple to do business with you.

3) Practice what you preach and preach what you practice. Treat your customers like you would like to be treated and then go even further by, in that classic phrase: exceeding their expectations. Give customers reasons to stay. Great service or products are terrific, but it never hurts to lure customers into the long-term fold. How about discounts for regular customers? Customer loyalty is needs to be appropriately valued and rewarded.

4) Nurture employees. “Old-fashioned” solutions still provide the edge. Research shows that a personal relationship with your employees is the key to keeping customers loyal and that happy staff keep customers coming back. Treat your employees as you would want to be treated year after year. Not only does that encourage staff to also do their bit to entice customer loyalty, it’s emphasises a supportive, responsive environment. Employee loyalty needs to be appropriately valued and rewarded.

5) Use sensible marketing practices. Not many people enjoy being inundated with telephone calls and mailings so don’t do it! Test, test, test and track the customers who come back. Once you know who your best customers are, the real work begins&ndashconvincing them to stay forevermore. Repeat purchase and retention rates capture the real financial ramifications of whether or not a company is delivering high value to its customers.

6) Know the value of your customers, segments and groups. Know who is likely to be loyal. Some customers are more trouble than they’re worth. Monitor what goes into keeping a customer satisfied; if it’s too costly or simply too much work - it’s wrong to say that everyone should be a lifelong customer.

7) Use effective CRM systems, don’t let the systems use you. Don’t be driven by the vendor or consultant - use them, they’re likely to know the technology far better than you. But let customers’ needs and everything above drive how you use the technology. Remember it is an aid not an end.

That’s all there is to it!

Talk to many business people about how they approach customer service and the majority of them will say that they are aiming to have ‘satisfied’ customers. No! What we all should be seeking is to have loyal customers.

Research has shown that 65% of customers say they are loyal. You may be happy with this but you shouldn’t! Satisfied customers are in a state of nothing &ndash they are neither issatisfied or happy; they are in between. They will tolerate you while you are of use to them but if a better deal comes along, they’re off.

On the other hand, loyal customers are your friends. They will be with you through thick and thin; they will be the first to try out you new product; they willing give you honest feedback; they will regularly refer business to you. This is what you want! But how can you turn a satisfied customer into a loyal one?

Let Them Decide How to Do Business With You

Today customers are a lot more sophisticated in how they want to do business. If your product or service lends itself to be offered via a number of different means, then give your customer the option.

Can you deliver face-to-face? What about telephone services? Could you make use of SMS texts for quick notes and reminders? Do you have a web site through which customers can contact you or even make orders on-line? If you provide a variety of delivery channels which are available to suit the customer’s needs then they are more likely to stay with you.

Build a Relationship

Loyalty can only be achieved if you have a true relationship with your customer. Aim to build rapport. Understand who are dealing with you and understand what they are looking for. Keep in regular contact with them; you don’t necessarily have to be selling something. Always use their names, especially their first name if you can.

All of this will help in building a long term relationship. Once you have this, they are less likely to walk away.

Generate Staff Loyalty

How can you cultivate a loyal customer if your staff are not loyal to the business? You must have staff who care for the job and will do anything to protect and move the business forward. Customers will be more loyal if they see familiar faces. A business with a high staff turnover will find it difficult to build a relationship with their customers.

Treat your staff well. Reward their successes and recognise their achievements. Hold regular training sessions so they feel they are learning and developing. An established training programme will also make sure that their product knowledge is up to date.

Seek Out Complaints

This sound strange but the average customer has to be encouraged to complain! Many will keep quiet about poor service but if they can find someone else to do their business with, they will. Set up a clear complaints procedure so customers can complain if they wish. Provide staff with the tools to effectively deal with customer problems. Follow up all complaints to ensure that they have been resolved.

Take an Interest

Show your customers that you are interested in their views. Run regular surveys to find out what they think of your service, to find out what you can do differently. You can either carry out a survey over the telephone, or go as far as doing a mailing to all your customers.

Taking the trouble to contact your customers will reinforce the message that you want their custom. But don’t forget &ndash take action on what you find out!

Be a ‘Can Do’ Business

Customers like nothing better than a business which delivers on even the most difficult of requests. ‘Can Do’ businesses will always have loyal customers. Train your staff to never use words like, “Sorry but …”, “It’s not my fault”, “Its company policy”.

Be a business where solutions are always looked for and problems seen as challenges.

Look After The ‘Golden’ Customers

The old 80/20 is likely to apply to your business &ndash 80% of your sales or profits are likely to come from just 20% of your customers. Work out who your top 20% are and love them to death! Why not concentrate on turning the remaining 80% into loyal customers? Well, the 20% have already shown that they trust and respect you. A little more effort with these customers will reap more business than concentrating on the ‘maybe’s’. By all means, run a programme to convert the ‘maybe’s’ but put more effort into the converted.

So, there you have it. Some ideas and tips on how to build and keep loyal customers. Take a critical look at your business and put a loyalty building programme in place, which will boost sales and profits.

WEBconferences are just like normal meetings but they are conducted virtually over the Internet. Presenters can give PowerPoint presentations, consult documents, use interactive on-screen graphics and even vote or display the results of collaborative efforts.

This eco-logic axis, is a new challenger on the WEBconference industry, Tele-efficiency, who supports it. Their service, better known as Conferenceware, is registered in the technological ecosystem. It integrates with Outlook in order to plan a meeting and to invite contacts and with Skype a voice over IP worldwide network. It includes a free audioconference service, in which the participants just make a long distance call, with accesses in North America and Europe, even better, free, with Skype.

According to the Forrester consulting firm, the WEBconference market has had a 28% annual increase in the last 5 years and this progression should continue until 2011, going from 700 million to 2,8 billions a year. Better know for its applications on the public WEBinar, the eMeeting applications should experience in themselves the strongest increase mainly among the multisite companies, those regarding knowledge as well as associations.

The cost of WEBconference services is usually based on per-minute and per-participant rates and, therefore, these services are very expensive. However, Conferenceware offers a free 30-day trial period followed by a fixed-rate quarterly or annual service contract that includes an unlimited number of meetings. Companies that use WEBconferences can reduce their traveling costs and improve the synergy of their meetings, since the latter can be held at any time, anywhere and even at a moment’s notice.

Conferenceware has been launched simultaneously in three languages; French, English and Spanis, in 15 countries on all 5 continents. The address of its international English portal is .tele-efficiency.net. With an interface available in several languages and that can be personalized with a company’s image and logo, Conferenceware fosters cultural exchanges and international cooperation. An on-line demonstration is available at .demo.conferenceware.info. It should be borne in mind that the prospect of events such as an avian flu epidemic could lead companies to adopt WEBconferences as part of their continuity strategy.

Problems

Nevertheless, reviewing a proposition with the client will actually save time for everybody as compared to just emailing or using rapid delivery services. Coordinating the responses to bids that involve many different resources within the company (but which are not always available) in conjunction with the deadlines that approach rapidly is, without doubt, a Herculean task. Our services give you the edge here, with the added advantage that the sales team will not be the last to know if a competitor makes a borderline maneuver.

Solution

In some cases, it is more appropriate to conduct a virtual meeting with a prospect, a client, a distributor, or a partner. Through web conference, a PowerPoint presentation, a software demonstration, or consultation of a document may be done online. Also, it is a great way to review and reinforce a proposition already sent to a client by email. Thanks to the presence indicator of the voice over IP software, Skype, other colleagues can be reunited, according to their availability, in order to produce a bid offer. Finally, an alert on the competition allows the exchange of all information related to, and needed for, the sales force.

Results

Reducing the traveling time of representatives proportionally increases their sales time, thus allowing them to focus better on the task. The level of stress that goes with answering a bid diminishes with better coordination, resulting in the improved quality of a proposal, which may be evident even to the client’s eyes. Sharing of experiences among the sales team members, regarding the competition, better equips them to neutralize arguments and to go ahead successfully.

Problems

In such a situation, a training method that is a continuing formation adapted to the ever-changing needs of the firms would be illusory; also, efforts to manage all the information within an organization as back-up data would be unrealistic. Often, consultation with employees is usually nonexistent, too. Hence, it can be safely concluded that the research result which says that clients’ loyalty is directly proportional to employees’ motivation is true.

Solution

Pedagogical methodology has profoundly evolved during the last ten years. Virtual classrooms have appeared, with long-distance training. Closer to us, “coaching” has become a common practice. Both these methodologies can make use of the web conferencing technology. By constantly recording the training sessions as well as the meetings, information can be made widely available to everybody. Usually, these concern better practices or strategic visions that can be shared. Also, thanks to the polls and votes during a web conference, the management gets to know the personnel’s opinions which they can actively implicate.

Results

First of all, optimizing training to integrate new employees shortens the time needed for them to fully develop their capacities and to perform better. Profit targets are met faster as costs get reduced, as well. Moreover, the organization’s efficiency in the developing of exchanges and the sharing of best practices improves, too. This has a considerable impact on profits. The higher the individual motivations pyramid, the more the people will feel the need to belong, to be appreciated, and to accomplish something. In short, the key is bidirectionality.

Problem

The key people are committed to organizing brainstorming sessions and focus groups, and in conceiving and validating concepts. Press conferences, sometimes lasting several weeks, are also held during product launches. For the fruition of these efforts, the prospects have to be carefully identified as qualified. Otherwise, these efforts will be futile, and the team will have to begin again without being able to capitalize their exchanges and use them repeatedly.

Solution

The marketing team announces on their WEB site the online presentations (WEBinar), for which the visitors have to register in advance. The brainstorming sessions among colleagues, the focus groups, press conferences, and product launching are done long distance during webconferences. In addition, these events are completely recorded, both voice and images, and then copied by different means and placed on the WEB site, the local network, and on CD or DVD in order to be reused or replayed for new prospects, employees, and partners.

Results

The added advantage of WEBinars is that the participants are identified as qualified beforehand. It’s only later on that they are considered as prospects for the sales team - this produces better “closing” performance from the team. The time devoted to events is significantly reduced. The response rate of the prospects is faster. The audio-visual archives integrated through the years represent priceless collateral material that can support sales. In addition, we have the power of multimedia to the performance of polymedia, on different kinds of supports, regardless of the time.

Problems

Moreover, the absence of a management representative at a meeting (albeit due to an important situation such as negotiating an important contract) is not uncommon. Consulting your colleagues helps you to take better decisions for the company. To conveniently hold meetings anytime and anywhere (also in small groups), make use of Tele-efficiency’s superior service.

Solution

The statutory meetings that are planned by the president are automatically scheduled in his Outlook calendar, after which he asks the participants to confirm their availability. During the meeting, he introduces the other presenter who gives a PowerPoint presentation and submits a document on the screen, which is also transmitted to his coworkers. If there is

an absentee, the meeting is integrally recorded, both voice and images, and emailed to the absentee, along with the hyperlink and password so that it can be replayed. The voice over Internet software, Skype, along with the instant messaging presence indicator, allows the members of the management team to know, at a given moment, their coworkers’ status, i.e., if they are with a “connected,” “no show,” “not available,” or “do not disturb” signal.

Results

If some of the management personnel are frequently traveling, they can participate in the meetings via the Internet from their hotel room, airport, or an Internet caf