Business owners of companies both large and small can achieve rich improvements in their operations if they start to ask themselves regularly, “I have just been handed a powerful new tool. It essentially lets me costless communicate with anyone on the planet. How can I best use it to my advantage?”

To focus, business owners must first ask themselves two questions: As a business owner, what am I trying to achieve?

Marry your answers to the diverse communications capabilities of the World Wide Web; you will inevitably create some powerful and highly beneficial new initiatives.

In exploring strategies for success in the developing environment, it is essential to recognize a fact that is often overlooked: The Internet is fundamentally a new communications vehicle. As a consequence, a large part of its value arises because it permits cost-effective communications &ndash down the street or on a worldwide basis&ndashthat were not possible before its emergence.

Why is this so important? Because many people have a very different view of the World Wide Web. They will suggest that the Web is an entertainment medium &ndashsomething that has more in common with the television than the telephone. This focus is easy to appreciate; the typical person is more interested in the new offerings on the Web that can entertain him or her than the less exciting details of enhanced communications capabilities. In addition, Internet use is the first activity in over forty years that has been clearly documented as something that causes people to spend less time watching television. It’s therefore natural to think of it as a substitute for this medium.

Benefits of Internet Telephony to Your Business:

1) Availability Completely under Customer Control. With the internet, visitors&ndashpotential customers &ndashcome to Web sites at their convenience, making them far more receptive to what companies have to say because the customers aren’t being intruded upon (as happens with telemarketing).

2) One-to-Many Communications Performed Seamlessly. The Internet offers one-to-many communications systems without losing the privacy or interaction possible by phone. A single posting at a Web site reaches as many people as visit the site that day

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3) Reduced Effort, Time, and Cost. The Web makes things easy and affordable.

Not all businesses are currently bringing in added profit via the Web yet; nonetheless, every business needs to be working on it in order to be competitive today.

The Web makes it possible for companies both large and small to develop new communications processes that save time and money while enabling faster responses to customer needs.

Many industries rely on widely distributed field sales forces that may consist of independent agents or company employees. In today’s fast-moving business environment, providing these frontline soldiers with the most up-to-the-minute information and the best possible tools and support is critical to success, and by using the Web, companies can do so at far lower cost.

2) Availability Completely under Customer Control.

With the Internet, visitors&ndashpotential customers&ndashcome to Web sites at their convenience, making them far more receptive to what companies have to say because the customers aren’t being intruded upon (as happens with telemarketing).

3) One-to-Many Communications Performed Seamlessly

The Internet offers one-to-many communications systems without losing the privacy or interaction possible by phone. A single posting at a Web site reaches as many people as visit the site that day.

4) Reduced Effort, Time, and Cost.

The Web makes things easy and affordable.

The Web makes it possible to communicate regularly with a large volume of customers at virtually no cost.

Businesses can generally benefit by disseminating information; yet up to now, there has not been a cost-effective, satisfactory way of timely customer notification. Not only is direct mail costly, but the timing of delivery is erratic and an overwhelming amount of it is never even opened. The telephone is timely, but information disseminated by telephone is also costly and runs the risk of alienating customers who don’t want to be bothered by solicitors.

Enter the Internet. The World Wide Web gives companies a low-cost method to communicate with existing customers and to reach out to potential ones with a timeliness that has never before existed.

The new capabilities created by the Internet far exceed what could be accomplished with the telephone. Consider how a well-designed Internet customer-communications system can work:

1.) Orders are confirmed by e-mail &ndashfirst immediately after they are placed, and again when they are shipped out. The shipping confirmation notice includes an internal tracking number to help customers locate the package if it fails to arrive on a timely basis.

2.) Customers can register for e-mail notifications of various kinds. By filling out an online form, customers can request to be notified about newly available products that are likely to be of interest to them.

3.) “Missing” customers can be inexpensively lured back: If a frequent customer has not made a purchase for some time, the electronic retailer can send a $5 or $10 digital coupon to encourage a return purchase. These types of ongoing efforts to build loyalty can be triggered by well-designed automated databases, combined with virtually costless e-mail, to create an inexpensive, potentially high-return, and customer loyalty program.

This suggests a central strategy for any business today: Gather e-mail addresses from customers (and permission to contact them using these addresses), even if you don’t yet have an interactive Web site. Every business from a major manufacturer to a regional discount store to the local plumber will find that well-designed e-mail messages can be a low-cost, highly effective means of building profitable revenues. In Strategy 7, I discuss how a local pest-control business might benefit tremendously from an e-mail-based initiative.

The Importance of round the clock availability

Like a good catalog and 800 numbers, the Internet makes your company accessible to customers worldwide twenty-four hours a day. However, the “Web” is better than the world’s greatest catalog.”

Here’s why:

Additional visuals as well as more written detail. Catalogs face an inherent limitation: Paper and postage are costly. As a result, details &ndashother views of a product as well as more written description&ndashoften have to be left out. So while the 800-number operator can read to customers the special washing instructions, if the product is offered on the Internet, the consumer can read the special washing instructions for him- or herself, scroll through a more lengthy product description, and in all likelihood, see more than one view of the item.

Expanded offerings. Today catalogs typically list only a portion of a company’s offerings, simply because more listings mean expansion of printing and mailing costs. The Web obliterates this limitation.

Remember too, that anything that can be accomplished online instead of by phone is more cost effective. A five-minute call to order a $50 item, at a cost of $1 per minute, means that the call is a significant percentage of the cost structure, and a five-minute inquiry&ndashwith no purchase attached &ndashcreates a financial loss in addition to time lost by personnel who might have been making a sale to someone else. This contrasts with use of the Internet, where&ndashto the extent that communications cost exists&ndashthey are trivial, and consumers bear the cost of company contact by paying their access service.

The Internet has now led to a new definition of what customers have come to expect: In the emerging era, businesses are almost required to provide twenty-four-hour Internet communications, so that the consumer can shop from home whenever he or she wants to. Sites that prosper will be more than order-taking vehicles; they will provide a creative, educational experience that builds knowledge about their products and services and engenders sales as well as ongoing customer loyalty.

Whether your business specializes in Porche luxury cars or temporary employment services , the Web offers you the opportunity to find people who are looking for what your company sells.

As program chairperson of my SCORE * chapter I am always looking for new presenters to address the group. I frequently ask my fellow business counselors to give me some ideas for topics of interest to them.

In August one member approached me with an idea. He suggested inviting some of the clients that the counselors had worked with this year to one of our meetings to give us some feedback on our counseling techniques -both the highs and the lows.

Five clients were invited to our meeting and they were asked the first 5 questions of this Top Ten list. We learned a lot from the answers we got.

As 2005 comes to a close and we begin 2006 perhaps you are interested in finding ways to get clients to give you feedback about the products and services you offer. Here is a list of 10 questions you could use. Select a few that suite your situation. The key is to ask the question and then allow the client uninterrupted time to answer. Your job is to just listen!

1. What was the greatest benefit you derived from my service**? This question helps you to understand what is working. Sometimes you will be surprised by the answer. Our SCORE chapter has a limit of 3 counselors at one location to counsel one client. Our client panelists said the more counselors the better! We have now eliminated the restriction on the number of counselors.

2. What would you like to see more of when you work with me? For our session the panelists told us some counselors introduced themselves by telling about their business background during the sessions while others did not. The clients said they wanted to hear the qualifications of the counselors who were working with them. Are you forgetting to be consistent when delivering your product or service to your clients? We were! ☺

3. How could I improve my service? Clients often have ideas that are easy to implement but somehow you haven’t thought of. SCORE does both email and face to face coaching. These were face to face clients who wondered if they could get support between sessions through email. Easily done now that we know it might be helpful. (Our email addresses are already on our SCORE business cards!)

4. Is there anything you would like to see me stop doing? This question gives the client the opportunity to tell you about something that isn’t useful to him or her. It was suggested in our session that sometimes it is difficult for the business owner to meet with the counselor because the owner can’t leave his/her place of business. The SCORE clients wondered if it would be possible for the counselors to occasionally meet them at their own place of business. The answer was “Yes”. Again not something we had thought to offer consistently.

5. Is there anything you didn’t get from my service that you were looking for?

Here is an opportunity for the client to tell you other services that you might provide. If you are looking for ways to expand your offering this question is important. In the SCORE session one client wanted to know how he might get a counselor who actually worked in or owned the specific type of business that he had. Access to a database of the counselors in our chapter and their background would be helpful to the counselors and our clients. We will be putting one together. (We did have one counselor with exactly the right background for this client.)

6. Has my staff treated you with care, attention, and courteousness? This would be an important question for a service provider with an administrative staff to ask. Clients don’t always complain about their experience with your staff but might share something significant when asked.

7. Is there an issue that I have not spent enough time on for you? Sometimes clients allow you to move forward but are still thinking about a previous issue. This kind of question helps them to revisit areas they may have not understood and still have an unanswered question.

8. Am I doing what you want me to do? Most of the time we are doing what we think the client wants. It is good to check once in a while to find out if you are actually doing what the client wants.

9. Where have we been less than proactive in addressing your concerns? It may be that the client is expecting you to move into different areas that you think are being covered by other vendors or staff members. “Being proactive” may have a broader definition to the client than you are using. Asking this question might uncover new business.

10. Is our billing clear? Are you getting value for your money? The bill is often a source of anxiety for the client. He/she needs to know exactly what he/she is being billed for. Does your bill show that? This final value question is critical to insuring your client is satisfied with your product or service.

*SCORE &ndash This is an organization that is part of the Small Business Administration in the US. SCORE volunteers are experienced managers and business owners who counsel small business owners without charge.

**I have used the word service here and also client. You could just as easily substitute product and customer.

We all know that good customer service is paramount to growing a business and increasing profitability. What many managers are failing to realize, however, is that rapid changes in technology have lead to equally rapid changes in the delivery of quality customer service.

In addition to the basics we all have heard time and again, there are five new areas of customer service that should be addressed to keep customers happy.

What do customers say?

1) Preserve me from auto-attendant hell! Customers are becoming increasingly annoyed and frustrated with having to sift through a multitude of options and press numerous buttons &ndash only to be told that the desired service is only available through the company’s website. Worse is when the auto-attendant uses voice recognition &ndash but doesn’t ‘recognize’ your voice.

It’s understandable that companies want to reduce costs by using attendants and, there’s no question that these are valuable tools. Yet, people want to connect with human beings; they don’t want to listen to a long list of prompts &ndash especially not if they are having a problem (and let’s face it, that’s what usually triggers the call in the first place). To keep customers happy, here are few simple tips:

• Always make it easy for customers to reach a human being.

• Give people the option of voice prompt or touch prompt.

• If you do use an auto-attendant, limit the number of menus to two rounds of choices before the customer reaches a human being.

• If you have asked the customer to key in account information, transfer the profile along with the call.

• If the call has been answered by a company rep, and needs to transfer the call to another department, do not put the customer back into a long queue. Instead, let your customer service rep be able to jump the front of the line, and get them to stay on the call with the client until the next person has picked up. Once this happens, the first rep should introduce the caller and give rep #2 a pr