Customer Satisfaction Articles

1). Customer Service in the Bottled Water Industry - Pure Water and the Customer Promise By : Jon M. Stout
Almost every company discusses, at length, the need for customer service and the significance of supplying true excellence to its customers. However, very few actually follow through with what it takes to attain this excellence. This is particularly true in the bottled water business since not all providers share the opinion that customer service is of the utmost importance in any business.
Article Related to: pure water, customer service, oxygenated water, bottled water, communication, customer satisfaction

2). Aim Your Sights at Your Customers' Downstream Success By : Adele Sommers
Copyright 2006 Adele Sommers Do you strive to ensure that your customers enjoy downstream success? Are you mostly concerned with your own financial gain, or do you also express a desire to see that your customers will succeed? If it's the latter, are you consciously considering the success of your customers' customers, or even of your customers' customers'.
Article Related to: project, projects, project planning, customer satisfaction, pleasing customers, interviewing clients, requirements, requirements analysis, persona, personas

3). Customer Satisfaction – Why do Companies Care? By : Terry Echols
This is the first in what is sure to be a lengthy series on “Customer Satisfaction”. The information contained here will cross over as training material quite nicely. In order to present the topic of “Customer Satisfaction” it is important that we have the same definition, working for the same page, so-to-speak. We should first identify the factors that contribute to customer satisfaction.
Article Related to: customer service, customer satisfaction, customer, customer loyalty, brand loyalty, product loyalty, product satisfaction

4). Customer Satisfaction – Why do Companies Care? Part 2 By : Terry Echols
Customer Satisfaction vs. Customer Loyalty A customer that is “satisfied” has purchased a product which is acceptable to them. A customer that is “loyal” is one whose experience was so exceptional, they will purchase again. The conventional wisdom for most industries has held that “if you have satisfied customers, you will have loyal customers.” It may sound correct, but is it? Saying when the sun is out the sky is clear at first seems to make sense, but it’s not entirely true.
Article Related to: customer service, customer satisfaction, customer, customer loyalty, brand loyalty, product loyalty, product satisfaction

5). Customer as Emperor By : W. Dave Free
From Japan comes the tradition of oshibori. Oshibori is the Japanese word for the rolled up hot towel you receive after eating at an authentic Japanese restaurant or at the conclusion of an international flight. If you have never experienced a hot towel after a long flight, it is as close as you can get to a refreshing shower in the comfort of your seat with all your clothes on.
Article Related to: customer satisfaction, word of mouth, viral marketing, business, business growth

6). Quality Lives in the Eye of the Beholder By : Adele Sommers
Copyright 2006 Adele Sommers Regardless of how good you believe your offerings or project solutions are, your clients and customers will be responding to "quality in perception" even more than "quality in fact." Quality in perception refers to things like courtesies, special considerations, a caring and personalized attitude, and a host of other subtleties that can lead us to believe that we are receiving something above and beyond what we're paying for.
Article Related to: quality, customer service, customer satisfaction, quality in perception, quality in fact

7). Keeping Your Offerings Easy to Use (Part 1) By : Adele Sommers
Copyright 2006 Adele Sommers What's the real formula for customer happiness? First, let's review what we know about customer unhappiness. We know that consumers expect our offerings to work exactly as advertised. Yet our products and services can introduce complex requirements -- even burdens -- of their own. Those extra requirements can quickly morph into "customer hassles" -- the kinds of aggravations that make consumers feel mildly annoyed all the way to really angry or stupid.
Article Related to: quality, customer service, customer satisfaction, customer dissatisfaction, quality in perception, quality in fact

8). Company Policy Does More Damage to Customer Service Than Anything Else By : Alan Boyer
Company policy is frequently the biggest barrier between customer satisfaction and your company. It can start with either o Company policy o Employee trying to do the right thing, but in their eyes the right thing is protecting the company from the stupid customer.
Article Related to: customer service, customer service training, customer satisfaction, company policy

9). The Customer Is King By : Barbara Gabogrecan
Explaining the importance of looking after existing customers and building of 'word of mouth' for exposure and growth of your business.
Article Related to: networking, customer service, customer satisfaction, star rating, customer rewards

10). 7 Positive Ways to Turn Complaints into Assets By : Allyn_Cutts
1. Be Prepared... Let's face it...you can please some of the people all the time, but you'll never manage to please all of the people all the time. There will be unhappy customers...that's the way life is. There's not a lot you can do about it...or is there? Being prepared to take a loss to keep a customer happy may seem like poor business sense at first glance, but think of it this way.
Article Related to: complaints, customer satisfaction

11). Making Gold from Scrap By : W. Dave Free
Nucor's business is not new and sexy. In fact it is as rust belt as it comes: melt down scrap steel to make new steel. What's amazing about Nucor is not the business they are in but their results. How does 387% return to shareholders over the past five years sound? That's better than Amazon, Starbucks and eBay. Since the 1980's it has grown into the largest steel company in the U.
Article Related to: business, business growth, customer satisfaction, innovation, entrepreneur

12). Making the Sale By : Liane Bate
When the quick buck doesn’t come, they might take desperate measures to make a sale, which also might turn out to be the wrong approach entirely. What they are not realizing is that their focus is on the product or service they are selling, when the focus should really be on themselves, and on their customers.
Article Related to: sales, leadership, customer service, customer retention, customer satisfaction

13). E-commerce and Drinking Water By : Jon M. Stout
April 25, 2006 E- Commerce is coming of age with millions of new customers from internet sales for a wide variety of products. Advances in web site design, payment mechanisms and delivery systems have met the increased demand for online ordering. With the advent of on-line ordering firms like Amazon and E-Bay, what started out as a small business has morphed into a multi-billion dollar industry.
Article Related to: e-commerce, privat labeled drinking water, pure water, local delivery water, customer service, customer satisfaction, ssl, dynamic e-commerce, secure payment, bottled water industry, 5 gallon

14). Stupid Things Stupid Businesses Do By : W. Dave Free
Of course businesses aren't stupid, in fact the people in the businesses aren't stupid (I'm being kind), but they become stupid as the people in them act stupidly. How so? I’m about to explain. Stupid businesses don’t grow right. They treat their customers badly. It’s likely that they don’t want to but they do because they have an environment of treating people badly.
Article Related to: business, customer satisfaction, customer relationship, entrepreneur, franchise

15). Business Owners: Customer Satisfaction Is Key By : Martin Stoleman
As a consultant for people who are considering starting their own small business, I naturally have many things to share with people. Clients come to me with a host of questions about the process of starting a business and about the details of what to focus on above everything else. Once we have talked through the logistics and the finances that are necessary in starting a business, I quickly move into talking about the keys to running a successful business.
Article Related to: customer satisfaction

16). Tips for Uncovering "Customer Hassles" By : Adele Sommers
Copyright 2006 Adele Sommers Are you wrestling with cranky customers, low-vitality products, congested services, and an aching bottom line? You certainly don't need to. Why exactly does this occur? One major reason is that consumers expect products and services to work exactly as advertised, in a confusion- and error-free manner. It's easy to understand why these expectations exist because we ourselves are consumers.
Article Related to: quality, customer service, customer satisfaction, customer dissatisfaction, quality in perception, quality in fact

17). Affiliate Marketing Makes You Money! By : wizard
When you join an affiliate program nothing happens until you help your merchant partner sell his goods and services. This will be done through your website and your advertising. It is only after a sale is made that you receive a commission for your assistance in making the sale. It is therefore necessary for you to have a well designed website and a well thought out marketing plan that generates a regular flow of traffic to your site.
Article Related to: marketing, website, customer satisfaction

18). Four Sure-Fire Ways to Keep Your Customers Happy By : Allyn
It's difficult to reach your buisness goals if you don't have the right materials and/or the information to help your buisness reach the success it's capable of. These four competitive marketing strategies is the information needed to produce an extremely successful buisness.
Article Related to: customers, customer satisfaction, marketing

19). 5 Steps To Making Your Customer Happy By : Tony Jacowski
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you – The golden rule of customer relationship management
Article Related to: customer satisfaction, measuring customer satisfaction, define customer satisfaction

20). Why Bother With Distributed Leadership? By : Kerri Salls
I'm an alumni of Boston University Graduate School of Business, so I receive the Alumni magazine Bostonia. To be honest, that doesn't mean I read it faithfully at all. But this issue was different. George Labovitz, a professor in organizational behavior at the school wrote an article recently on his research into the application of alignment to achieve extraordinary results in organizations.
Article Related to: alignment, strategy, processes, growth, profits, customer satisfaction, vision, communication

21). The Key Ingredient in Client Satisfaction: Underpromise and Overdeliver By : Donna Gunter
Copyright 2006 Donna Gunter Like anyone else who operates a small service business, your word is your bond with your clients. A client might tolerate a broken promise here and there for a very good reason, but if the broken promises continue, the client's trust in you will be lost, and in very short order you will lose the client. Granted, things happen to you as a small business owner that are out of your locus of control--a family member becomes ill, you lose electrical power (I know about this one only too well!), or your computer crashes.
Article Related to: customer service, customer satisfaction, underpromise, overdeliver, donna gunter, online business coaching company

22). Loose Leaf Tea and the Tea Room – A Valuable Partnership By : Jon M. Stout
The growth in demand for high quality loose leaf tea is spectacular and all indications are that the trend will continue for the foreseeable future. As more loose leaf tea enthusiasts consume greater quantities of tea, the relationship between tea suppliers and the tea room increases in importance. Tea rooms are critically important to suppliers of loose leaf tea because the tea room bundles high quality loose leaf tea with other food products, services and an ambiance that create a very pleasurable tea experience.
Article Related to: loose leaf tea, tea rooms, value added tea, customer satisfaction, branding, quality tea, quality loose leaf tea, e-commerce, quality brand

23). Making Your Customers Partners By : Joe Torrence
Take a number, press 1 for technical service, all of our service reps are busy…sound familiar? If your like me I’ve had to succumb to the inevitable world of technological advancement but somewhere along the way I (a person) have got lost in the shuffle. Having to deal with auto menus and robotic web sites to place an order or ask a question has become a matrix of sterile graphics and personless decision making.
Article Related to: customer satisfaction, partners, goals

24). How To Satisfy Customers Using These Top 10 Tips By : Dennis Sommer
Copyright 2006 Dennis Sommer Keeping your customer satisfied is key to your success and it doesn't matter if you are selling products or services to external or internal customers. Customer satisfaction is one area that will either kill or excel your business. Unsatisfied customers will go out of their way to tell others why they should not use your products or services.
Article Related to: dennis sommer, btrc, business adviser, sales, customer service, customer satisfaction

25). Forum Perils for Customer Relationship Management By : Jeff Walters
Forums are not only useful for sharing ideas and web-networking - they can also be used as part of your customer relationshiop management strategy. This second article covers the negative impact forums can have on your customer relationship management initiatives - both through your own actions, as well as those of unhappy customers.
Article Related to: customer relationship management, crm, forum, customer satisfaction, lead generation, prospects, dissatisf