Website customer management is something that some websites struggle with and it is not because webmasters are unaware of the needs of their customers. The trouble that most webmasters have with their website customer management is one of articulation. Poor communications breed misunderstandings. A simple misunderstanding can lead to all kinds of problems and severely tarnish the reputation of a business. Not all customers are vindictive, but some of them can be. Blogs are a dime a dozen these days and the last thing you want is a disgruntled customer posting bad experiences on their blog, no matter how small the readership. If the readership is more than one, it is too many.

Website customer management techniques for dealing with nightmare customers are many and varied. The most important thing to remember is to be as thick skinned as you possibly can. If a customer becomes offensive do not retaliate, take the high road. Meet any of their needs that are reasonable, but none of the needs that are not. This is as true in regular customer management as it is in website customer management.

Keep your communications as professional as they can be. Many people will choose to pre-write communications for delicate situations. Cut and paste material to suit. The goal of this is to avoid misunderstandings. Read and reread anything that you write before you send it. If you have someone else that can read it as well, pass the writing through as many sets of eyes as is feasible. If you are too used to reading your own material, it is a possibility that you will overlook something.

Avoid saying no directly. In many cultures a blatant refusal is exceedingly impolite. Rather than saying no you could say something like, “Unfortunately we are unable to concede to your request at this time.” If an unreasonable request is made, an indirect refusal can be a great way to effectively say, “no,” without upsetting the customer.

Website customer management can take a great deal of time to master. Every once in a while, you will get a nightmare customer that takes exception to something. Defuse the situation as much as possible and talk things over with the people that you work with. Sharing website customer management techniques is the best way to develop effective procedure.

The final part of this three part series. Today we will take a look at techniques that you can employ to deal with even the most difficult of customers.

Managing difficult website customers can be a bit of a chore at times, but is worth doing properly. Remember, angry emails can get published and if you lose your temper, with a customer the last thing you want is to see your words published on the Internet. You are an ambassador to your website, don’t forget it. Difficult customers are generally aware of the troubles that they cause. If you handle yourself well, they just might keep coming back.

Yesterday, I treated you to a personal anecdote which showed customer management done the wrong way. It is a true story that featured your’s truly as a somewhat obnoxious customer, I was younger then but I never did mince my words. Today, let’s examine what Peter, the offensive sales person could have done to win my commission and make that big sale.

From the beginning, Peter should have realized that it was not going to be a simple sale. Most people do not book ten tickets at once. He should have offered me a deal from the very beginning and he should not have given me an inflated quote, when I asked for an estimate. He did not read my email carefully enough. He tried to railroad me into purchasing the high priced tickets as well. Explaining that it was a busy time of year (July) and that it might be hard to get a seat later so I should go ahead and make the purchase now. He should have said that there will be some more affordable tickets later and told me when I could expect the prices.

He never once apologized for his mistake. Most people tend to be forgiving and he could have explained his way out of the hole that he dug. Instead he got defensive and tried to reverse the blame to me. So much for, “the customer is always right.” He explained that it was I who misinterpreted him, not good.

He got emotional and that is just pathetic. Banning me from doing business with his company. CCing me an email that he sent to the company IT guy, informing him to block my email account, kindergarten stuff.

Where Peter went wrong was when he started chasing the biggest commission he thought that he would be able to get. He should have been chasing the sale. That is the key to website customer management. A huge sale is great, but repeat business is much better. Had Peter tried to pamper me a little, sacrificed a little commission to give me a nice deal, he would have made an outstanding sale and boosted his reputation in his company. Instead he chased a customer away.

Tomorrow we will be taking a look at website uptime monitoring. This three part series on dealing with difficult customers will be concluded the following day.

Remember the old adage, “the customer is always right,” it applies doubly for anything web related. As a customer, I can be a bit of a jerk. I have high standards of myself and I expect those standards to be present in other people. I guess I would make a good exhibit A for difficult website customers.

I remember one time that I was planning a trip and booking a flight with an online travel agent who shall remain nameless, we will call him Peter. It was about six months in advance, but there was a group of us going, so I thought that I would snoop out the best deal and find a good travel agent at the same time. As there were ten of us going, I thought I should at least have a little bit of leverage. I mean, ten international flights is great commission in anyone’s book.

I made email contact with a travel agent that was known for good prices. I said that I realize that it is early, but would he be prepared to give me some idea of the ticket price based on last year’s prices. I explained that I was not asking for a quote, just a ballpark figure to get an idea of what the damage might be. He replied that the best deal he could offer was with Air China and that the cost would be over $3,000.

I got upset and asked him if he took me for a fool? The price was a 300% markup on last year’s prices which I had recently become aware of. He replied to me familiarly and said that he was simply giving me the best quote that he could for the trip. I said that would hardly be the best quote he could offer for ten tickets and suggested that he was trying to rip me off (which he was). I went on to add that since we were not friends, he should not be referring to me by an abbreviated form of my first name and that a surname and title were more fitting. Then he became insulting and told me that I was no longer able to do business with his company. He lost a fat commission on what turned out to be an $8,000 (as opposed to $30,000) sale. I went with one of his competitors which had the best website customer management practices I had seen in a long while.

Peter clearly knew nothing about website customer management. He was ignorant and he lacked people skills. He was too quick to become defensive and too thin skinned for his own good. I never said anything untoward or insulting, I simply questioned what was a ridiculous price. He broke every rule in the customer management book.

What should Peter have done? Stay tuned for Part 2 which will be featured tomorrow.

Web design projects can create time management issues. It takes a great deal of time to code a site if you are not doing it all the time. There once was a time that I would do all of my site designing myself in a bid to save a few extra bucks. It usually worked out well for me, but spending hundreds of hours in front of the computer screen designing websites is not my idea of fun. I prefer to be in the trenches making sales, promoting, producing content and that sort of thing. Time is money after all, and why not spend your time doing the things that you do best? Outsourcing website design can be a massive time saver and is not all that expensive with GetAFreelancer.com and Quote Catcher.

I use Quote Catcher for times that I want a site designed from the ground up. Quote Catcher will allow different designers to bid for your site. You will get up to five quotes, you choose the one that is the best offer from your point of view. The best offer does not have to be the cheapest one. It depends on your needs, if you want a slick looking website, then it is probably wise to go with whichever site designer has the most impressive portfolio. If it does not really matter, go with the cheapest.

When I have smaller or more technical jobs, I use GetAFreelancer.com. With GetAFreelancer.com you give a specific outline of the job that you require and freelance programmers will offer you bids. It is important to distinguish GetAFreelancer from Quote Catcher. The freelancers on GetAFreelancer.com are programmers, you use them for programming related jobs. If you need a shopping cart system, or would like to make some sort of site related improvement, this is the place to go.

Website customer management is one of the most important aspects of any online business. Your interactions with your customers can help to drive futures business or help to drive it away. It is all about your approach. Here are a few things that you should take care to avoid.

The wrong kind of communication can be downright annoying. A great example of what not to do is what Real Player does. While Real Player’s communications are legal, they are about as close to spam as you can get without risking arrest. Both my Yahoo email account and Gmail account automatically filter Real Player’s communications to junk. Keep your communications simple, positive and to the point and you can’t go wrong. Make the effort with your website customer management and it will pay dividends. If you are looking for useful advice about how to take control of your website customer management, pay us a visit at Brick Marketing.

Website Customer Management is not something that can be taken lightly. It needs to be in the forefront of the mind of every webmaster. Customers spell life or death for a business and website customer management can mean the difference between a one-time purchase and a loyal customer. No business owner can feel confident in the performance of their business if they do not get repeat business. Repeat customers mean dependable sales and that equals stability. Here are a few tips for improving your website customer management system.

If you have any questions relating to website customer management, please pay us a visit at Brick Marketing.

There was a time when commercial websites only featured product pages and contact forms. In those days, Website Customer Management was a simple as keeping a simple customer database that would include their contact details as well as the items that they had purchased. In the age of Web 2.0, however, things are more difficult. A website often includes a lot more than product pages. Some sites incorporate forums, chat rooms and support systems that require visitors to be logged in. In many cases, these various functions are not integrated at all, they exist as individual entities on the website that requires a customer to remember login information for each component. That is poor customer management.

The trouble is that while most webmasters are able to handle the installation of scripts, they have no idea how to integrate the member databases for them. It requires a certain degree of programming expertise that is beyond the scope of most people. Yet, can you imagine the difference that it would make to give your customers access to all the features of your website with a single login? It is likely that your database will become a lot more complex and it will require some coding work, whether you decide to outsource to a freelancer or attempt it yourself, it will require time. Once integrated, however, website customer management becomes a much simpler task.

There are vastly different information requirements for a product purchase and a forum membership, but you can gear your sign up system to operate differently in different areas of your site. Sign up should always be as simple as possible. A forum sign up requires no more than a name, a date of birth and an address. If that forum customer chooses to make a purchase at some time, you add the relevant information to the database. The entire process should be automated. If your customers are able to access all areas of your site with a single login, they will be grateful that you made the effort. You will be thankful that you did it as well, as it makes communicating with your customers much less of a chore. There is nothing worse than sending multiple emails to customers because they have signed up to multiple areas of your site. A centralized website customer management system ensures that does not happen. If you have any questions or need some professional advice in this area, please contact us at Brick Marketing.

Website Customer Management is a term that can cover various aspects of website to customer interaction. The term covers such a diverse range of functions as record keeping, traffic analysis and site optimization. In this article we will look at how traffic analysis can assist you in website customer management.

Non-invasive customer tracking is easy enough to accomplish, there are many tools to do this and they are quite easy to incorporate. It is very useful to know what your customers are doing, but it is equally useful to know what our visitors are doing. Customers are buying, but many visitors are on the fence. Learning as much as we can about what parts of our sites are drawing the visitors makes sense. Learning where our buyers go and perhaps why our non-buyers leave can help us run a more successful online enterprise. It is a part of website customer management that few small to medium enterprises choose to explore, yet it can make such a difference.

Hits Link is a traffic monitoring and analysis service that is available by subscription. The pricing structure is tiered so that it is affordable to large and small businesses alike. Using Hits Link, a webmaster is able to identify important information relating to website visitors and customers. According to the website, they provide information on:

*Who visits your site
*How they found you
*How they navigate your site
*If they buy or transact on your site
*How effective your advertising is

Website analysis is available at a very reasonable price and is certainly worth incorporating. It can assist you not only in website customer management, but also in business intelligence. If you are interested in learning more about website traffic analysis, website customer management or any aspect of commercial website operations, please do not hesitate to contact us at Brick Marketing.

Website customer management is a term that generally refers to one of two things. It can refer to how you deal with your customers and it can refer to how you manage your customer information. Both are extremely important if you want to run a successful business enterprise on the world wide web. Here at Brick Marketing, we help commercial website owners improve their performance. Website customer management is just one aspect of website management for which we offer advice and technical solutions.

When it comes to the data side of website customer management, most websites opt to create a customer database. The database records any relevant customer information. For some businesses, relevant information might simply be a name, address and phone number. Successful businesses, however, tend to collect as much information as they can, without being too intrusive. Other useful information that can be collected includes date of birth (things like birthday cards or emails go a long way towards strengthening your relationship with your customer), sales information and where they heard about your website. Depending on your industry, there may be quite a range of information that you are able to gather.

All of the information that you gather can be used towards building a customer relationship and shoring up future business. If you want to send out group mails and promotions, good website customer management will ensure that you are able to quickly find the best possible candidates from within your safe list. You do not need to limit your data gathering to the sign up page. People’s tastes and interests might change over time, the sign-up page remains the same. Customer management must therefore be a process that is both ongoing and dynamic. You can use various parts of your site to feed your database with relevant information. You do not need to have one database for addresses, another for your mailing list and so on. All of your customer information can be seamlessly integrated.

If you are looking for help or advice in relation to your website customer management, you have come to the right place. Here at Brick Marketing, we help commercial website owners build better, more efficient sites. Whether you need technical solutions or advice, Brick Marketing can help.