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A period of recession is gearing up or moving down frequently. Along with it, monetization of the market is making the ventures optimistic. The statistics say that this year is crucial for the small businesses and they look up for positive result. We have to wait and see the dramatic changes. Business and finance are two such generic terms on which people searches the maximum contents. Therefore, I am also sharing a cup of hot finance knowledge through my blog.

In the financial year of 2013, stay with me to move ahead.

Wednesday 25 September 2013

Turn Holiday Customers To Year-Round Customers – Is It Possible?


Trick or treat?

Voila, Halloween is here! Everywhere people have started to plan something special to make this Halloween share more fun than the previous. Brand marketers, small business owners and the entrepreneurs want to cash this opportunity (freaky holidays and festive seasons) to earn more revenue.

Yes, it is time to earn revenue. Just look at different brands, they work year round planning for grand bash in their retail promotions during Holidays. Brands are there who shoot ads in the summer for next December and starts retail branding much before the first snowfall.

High traffic volumes, huge customer service calls, giant returns on investments and stock up on cashiers at the registers are the four pillars to achieve this holiday.
 
Retailers prepare themselves to achieve these four pillars every year during different holidays and festive seasons. For year round, they prepare and celebrate when the season slows to halt. In the midst of all, there is one essential in-store element that retailers cannot miss – NEW CUSTOMERS!

Retailers need to add capital on the new traffic, to harness more revenue. What do the retailers can execute to turn holiday shoppers into year round shoppers? Here, we are going to share three expert tips:

1. CREATE PEER-TO-PEER CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE THIS HOLIDAY & FESTIVE SEASONS

Brand marketers, retailers and small business owners if you really want to send the message of turning holiday shoppers to your year-round customer, then take the first step carefully -

FIRST STEP: provide an amazing in-store customer experience to seasonal shoppers

SECOND STEP: create a strong impression, as the first impression lasts.

In seasons, you will find that people no longer leisurely walks around the mall. They are in a rush, know exactly what they look for and are in search of employees to help. Have more employees, educate them on the products, and let them wear a smile always. Spread the holiday cheer that should be your employees’ motto.

What you are offering customers in the first visit of your store or website during holidays, will affect their decision. In holidays, you need to exert extra effort to lessen your customers’ waiting time. Thus, ask your employees to give customers adequate attention, so that they keep coming back.

2. JUST NOT CONNECT- ‘FOLLOW UP’ CUSTOMERS THORUGHOUT THE YEAR

Well, retailers and brand marketers might feel this point as no-brainer, but this opportunity will allow you to get as much information on the customers. Get their email address, phone numbers, and ZIP codes etc. Send them retail promotions, offers and discount messages year round. Tailor promotions according to the persona - family man, businesspersons, young adults, teenagers etc.


Holiday sales are a one-time event. People will love to establish a connection if you present them something valuable, year-round in spite of being a holiday shopper.

·    Send customers personalized birthday cards during their birthdays

·    Send greetings on special events like anniversary, wedding, new born-babes  etc

To travel an extra mile, you need to follow-up. Go ahead, if one item is out of stock, call up the customer and let them know when it will come next. Personal emails and calls will confirm a stronger customer-marketer relationship.

3. EXCEED CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS

The above two points add value to this attribute. If you want to turn your holiday shoppers into long-term customer, you need to exceed expectations. Create memorable and positive experience. What does this indicate? Do not compromise over customer happiness. Surprise your customers every time with unexpected offers and giveaways. Treat them in a manner, as they want to be treated during the holiday rush.

Give away free items to increase repeat business and influence customer goodwill. A customer who will experience this will be more willing to share their excellent customer experience via popular social media platforms.

Will you like to miss the opportunity to get more customers with your customer feedback?

So don’t’ just meet, rather exceed customers expectation this holiday!!!

Turn your holiday shopper to long-term shoppers with these three ideas. Happy Holidays …. Have a Grand Shopping Season!

Author Bio: Moumita Dasgupta, a financial blogger and the owner of bizandfiz, shares her knowledge and expertise of various financial topics. A clear view on market, business, Forex, funds, personal finances etc. are the subjects she perfectly underlines through her articles.  Find Moumita on Google+

Monday 16 September 2013

The Big Data - Changing Customer Experience in Your Style



Big Data is certainly the biggest trend and a key technology that comes with a big promise for small, big and mid-sized businesses. Big Data Week, which commenced on 22 April 2013, said about industries using their big data to take conform decisions about their organizations and improve their business functions mainly sales and marketing.

According to the Big Data experts who met in the Big Data week, Big Data is an asset to sales organization if they can understand their use clearly. You will definitely have some tangible result.

We have terabytes customer history and their behavioral pattern that tries to extrapolate the customer experience sensibly. Rather you work on hard data and evidence, to improve the customer experience.

Customer service is an area that is untouched by developing technology. You have numerous channels to use, but customer experience has not gelled well with anyone in the same way as big data.

Major Big Data Approaches Used by Top Performers

Talking of Big Data you will come across the three best approaches, which the top performers prefer to use.

Interactive Exploration - For discovering real-time patterns in big data, in a synchronized way as they emerge

Direct Batch Reporting- To summarize the data collected

Batch ETL - To analyze historical trends or link the disparate data

Survey report of MIT Sloan Management Review  says that top performers prefer to use the three trends five times to the lower performers to deliver superior customer services.

It is quite tricky to figure out how to translate the information into increased website traffic and fuller shopping carts and that also in real-time. Well, for the marketers there is some good news. Now you can find different tools to dig mines of data to refine your online marketing approach.

While talking to industry experts in Big Data week, we learned 8 big factors, which helped the experts to tame their data and improve the customer experience.

Let us read on:

1. Continuous Progress and Not Instantaneous

Do you know from today, Big Data will bring vast changes in the way you do business. Well, do not jump into action at once. To have productive result try the test-and-learn method. Move at a slow pace with your website designing or personalization, rather than innovating them in one sweep.
Difference in market exposure:

Successful marketers- try to refine them all the time

Experts - take baby steps and improve their company every day to retain the customer loyalty for a longer period

2. Support Big Data Goal with Individual Goals

For achieving different business goals, you must have separate strategies like acquiring new customers, boosting new conversion rates, improving customer loyalty or increasing customer value. This helps to use data in a better way.

3. Omni-Channel Service

Customers are turning mobile, and they prefer to use social networks like Facebook and Twitter to interact with various industries. Research shows that 93% of consumers regularly use multiple channels to interact with leading brands. All the consumers expect to receive the same levels of customer service, and for that, Omni-channel service is the talk of the town. It helps to improve the customer interactions and starts a multi-channel communication through mobile, speech, chat, store etc.

Most of the industries have all the relevant data to deliver this modern and intuitive service and make the customers life easy.



4. Internal Sell of the Concept

Well, in the Big Data Week we have seen some organizations, prefers to provide evidence-based marketing to get everyone on-board. They encourage continuous sharing and learning. Presents the data in an easy way and does not hide the results to help the customers in decision framing.

5. One Team

You need to include different marketing strategies, various creative web developers and analytic experts who at times feel threatened to work with hard evidence. To improve the customer’s experiences find a dedicated way to drive the processes for future improvements.

6. The Data You Have Collected Is the ‘BEST’

CRM and website of your organization keeps on collecting real-time data that are far more valuable than you might have obtained from the outside vendor. It is about your prospective customer and collection of those data, which your competitor does not have.

Some typical examples on which you can capitalize your big data strategy are -

Channel
Conversion rates
Form inputs
Frequency of website visits
Geography
Interaction pattern
Purchase source
Social traits
Transaction pattern

7. Customer By Customer Real-Time Optimization

Most of the marketers set their goal in a way that embarks on - what customers should see, what offers company will give them and what companies will say to them. Designing a desirable customer experience is important to make them buy more.

8. Providing a Predictive Experience

Big data helps to predict issues before they occur. You can achieve this by analyzing the data and developing smarter models to adapt the customer needs. These big data processes helps to pay dividends in brand loyalty and thus business will require fewer sources to manage customer enquiries and complaints. At times, the big data benefits extend to support cross-sell and up-sell. Just to understand customer requirements and suggest relevant complementary replacements.

Big data helps companies to anticipate the wants and the needs of the customers, simplifies the customer interaction channels, and tries to learn from those interactions for future improvements.

Try to do all of this and you will see that your customers are smiling, irate ones will turn back, and prospective ones will retain loyalty for a longer time.

Dig out large profits with Big Data and improve your customer service!

Author Bio : Moumita Dasgupta, a financial blogger and the owner of bizandfiz, shares her knowledge and expertise of various financial topics. A clear view on market, business, Forex, funds, personal finances etc. are the subjects she perfectly underlines through her articles.  Find Moumita on Google+

Monday 2 September 2013

A Positive Business Approach: Comforting Your Employees at Crucial Times


Through the article, we are going to share a trend that both small and big business owners must adopt to keep tab of their business surrounding.

One of the most important aspects that they must take care is their Employees.

If you are an owner with a human face, then you have to consider this trend as a successful and a positive business approach. As soon as you start a business, it is important to look into the benefits of your employees. In the crucial times, it is necessary to enlighten and comfort your employees.

Tragedies are unavoidable, it can occur anty time at anypart of the world. And if the tragedies strikes your employees, then don’t you think that it might affect your workplace?

Tragedies occur often and in any part of the continent. And if the tragedies strike the employee, then it might affect their workplace. The tragedies to note like: WTO Building Catastrophe (9/11), Boston Marathon Tragedy the most recent one has hampered many people and has affected their workplace.  

Talking of Boston Marathon, many of the employees who took part in the marathon, though uninjured had not been able to overcome the trauma. As for 9/11 people were shackled like anything and they still cannot forget the pains of losing their friend, family, or maybe closed ones.

With 9/11 and Boston bombings alarming the media, tragedies have taken a serious setback in the working arena. In such an instance, owners should know the ways to handle such critical situations. Since, Boston is not the only place, tragedies can happen anytime.

Show Compassion towards Your Employees

A business environment in which we deal is actually based on give and take policy. But yes, you have to maintain  the need of your employees staying within this policy. In order to get the best out of them, you have to consider something else as the major priority. Such as:

·      Sending someone home early in this traumatic period.

·      May be availing him or her with an extra holiday.

·      Attending the funeral of your employees close relative, just to show support to your employee.

Don’t Think That You Know Your Employee Feelings

Being the owner of your business don’t think that you are always empathetic. But, if you are having hard working employees and if he or she just cannot concentrate due to a tragic event, however, you may or may not affected by it, then assume that they are telling the truth.




All your employee needs to do is to call a toll-free number anytime within the 24 hours. This number allows them to connect the counselor. EAP programs are inexpensive. You do not need to be an expert when you think to help the employee during a crisis and if the crisis is personal, then the employee does not need to inform you. EAP is such an instance calls back and reports that one of your employees called, but they won't inform you about the problem, but let your employee get a befitting solution and a recovery from the trauma or setbacks.

Sticking to the Laws

If 50 or more than 50 employees are working under you, then you fall under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) that requires giving some time to those who need a medical aid or maybe to the one who is the caregiver for a family. Many of the states have a lower threshold and even some additional features. Check out the laws and rules that you have to abide. The law is actually a guideline that lets you fulfill the needs of the employees that are immediate and good.

Well, it is better to conclude with the tagline -  happy employees bring better profits”. So, if business is your concern, take care of your employees to amplify your business reputation.

Author Bio : Moumita Dasgupta, a financial blogger and the owner of bizandfiz, shares her knowledge and expertise of various financial topics. A clear view on market, business, Forex, funds, personal finances etc. are the subjects she perfectly underlines through her articles. 





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