Helping Your Business Generate as Much Profit as Possible
By Business Desk
Friday, October 2, 2020.
This year, more than ever, most businesses are looking for more ways to generate profit. It’s been a difficult year for many of us from a business mindset. The coronavirus and Covid-19 pandemic took us all by surprise and had many businesses grinding to a halt. Many haven’t made it this far, so if you’re reading this article and you still have a business to try to keep afloat, you’re lucky! We want you to make it through this pandemic with as many staff still on board and in the best financial position possible. So, here are a few different things you can do to continue generating profit, even during these difficult times!
Provide the Best Customer Service Possible
When you run a business, there’s one rule that the vast number of companies – regardless of their size, their industry or the products and services they sell – will follow. This is that the customer is always right. This is a phrase that’s been thrown around left, right and centre ever since it was used by the owners of Selfridges and Macy’s. These companies, of course, are huge names and have made a whole lot of money – and they often attribute their success to their great customer service. So, if you’re looking to make profits, you might want to walk in their shoes. Here are a few tips that will help you to provide the best customer service to generate the most money.
Is the Customer Really Always Right?
If we’re being honest then, no, the customer isn’t necessarily always right. Every so often you’ll come across a customer who is entirely unreasonable, perhaps making unrealistic claims or coming up with unreasonable demands. Some customers will also have entirely unrealistic expectations, wanting companies to give out freebies or service that is way above their means. But this isn’t really what we’re saying when we say the customer is always right. Instead, we actually mean that you need to keep your customers happy by providing the best products as services you possibly can. Listening to customers will help you to know exactly what you have to do to improve upon your current operations and generate more loyal, happy customers, more recommendations, more good reviews and more profit!
Open Up Lines of Communication
The first step towards keeping your customers happy is to listen to them. In order to be able to listen to them, you’re going to have to open up as many lines of communication as possible. Different customers like to communicate in different ways, so it’s a good idea to make sure that they have as many different ways of getting in touch as possible. Some customers will want to call and speak to someone over the phone. Some customers will like to send emails that they can get to when they have time themselves. Some will prefer instant chat so that they can get instant replies but don’t have the pressure of spanking over the phone. Set up all of these options. Having an answering call service, a business email address, a customer service assistant on instant chat and even other options will keep as many people as happy as possible.
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Train Your Staff
Of course, you need to train your staff if you’re going to ensure they provide the best service possible. So, consider a brand tone of voice, branded answers to FAQs and make sure your staff know how to draw up correspondence and communicate in a way that you deem acceptable for your brand!
Invest in SEO
Your business can have the best products and services out there. You can have great branding. You can have a great ethic behind the company. You can have happy and content staff who are hardworking and proactive. But none of this matters if customers don’t know that you exist. The market nowadays is saturated in almost all fields. So, there’s a lot of noise to stand out against. How can you achieve this? Well, you’ll have to engage with SEO.
What is SEO
“SEO” stands for “search engine optimisation”. It is a commonly employed and increasingly popular business practice that has the main goal of getting as many search engine users to visit your webpage as possible. Of course, getting more people to pass through your page boosts brand exposure, gives you a chance to show off your products and services and can result in more sales. But how can search engines help you to achieve this? Well, think about it. Put yourself in the shoes of a consumer. If you were looking for something to buy, where would you start? A search engine! You’d type in a few key words related to the kind of item you’re looking for and generally, you’ll click one of the first links that’s displayed. The link you click will send you to a site where you can find what you’re looking for and make a purchase. Now, from a business perspective, you want your site to be that first link. After all, this will result in more sales! SEO is the practice that gets you to the top of the search engine results!
Tackling SEO
So, what can you do to get high rankings when it comes to SEO? Well, the best thing to do is to generally outsource to an SEO specialist or an SEO agency. This is much better than taking on full time staff during such uncertain times, as you can simply outsource the task and pay for the service as and when you need it. Plus, it beats trying to learn the ins and outs of the complex SEO process yourself. This is a truly specialist subject and you’re going to need a long time to learn if you do want to take it into your own hands. Outsourcing will help you to see much faster results! For those who are determined to take on SEO themselves, you may want to look into keyword optimisation, which entails researching, analysing and choosing out the best keywords to incorporate into your copy. Whether that’s the copy on your product descriptions, your blog posts, your web pages or copy anywhere else!
Be Mindful When You Open Back Up
Of course, if you usually run a brick and mortar store, you’re going to be itching to get back in there. But you do need to be mindful when opening back up. This will help people to feel more comfortable and more likely to come into your store. It also keeps everyone safe as a general principle. Here are a few areas to focus on!
Rearrange Your Premises
Chances are you’re going to need to rearrange your premises when you get back on site. Things can’t be arranged as they might have been pre-pandemic. After all, you need to make sure that your store accommodates people while allowing them to stand two metres apart from anyone who isn’t in their social bubble. This may mean that you can’t display as much stock or have as much furniture as you usually would, but you will have to go along with this and find extra storage for these things elsewhere. Bear in mind that you may also have to limit the number of people allowed in the store at any given time.
Put Up Safety Signs
You’ll need more safety signs once you’re back on site. This can include signs indicating how many people are allowed in the store at once. It can include signs reminding people to social distance. It could be a sign reminding people that they need to wear a mask inside the store. It could even include floor stickers that show proper social distancing distances so that people know exactly how far away they should be from others at any given time in any given space.
Put Up Screens
If there are spaces where people may need to be closer than two metres, such as cashiers at the pay desks, you should put up a safety screen. This will be clear, so customers and staff can still interact, but it will provide a protective barrier for both parties.
Provide Hand Sanitiser
Providing hand sanitiser in your store is also good practice. It will help you and others to know that everyone’s hands are sanitised if anyone touches anything inside your store. Generally, it’s best and cheaper to buy in bulk. Sanitising stations should be set up at the entrance to your store, as well as in any other areas where people might touch things, for example next to the cash register where people might input their pin code in a card reader.
These are a few completely different areas you could focus on to give yourself the best chances of generating as much profit possible at the moment. Hopefully, enough information has been provided to help you achieve success!
