Ricky’s Online Business Blog

In serving customers, I’ve learned that transparency is one best policy to adopt.

Let say you are expecting an urgent incoming email but suddenly your mail server goes down.  You just can’t send or receive emails at all.  You become frustrated and call up your hosting provider.  You are about to curse them.

“We are sorry for the inconvenience. We just restarted the server.  Please try to check your email again in 5 minutes.”

Have you heard such standard reply before?  Perhaps few weeks later the same thing happens again.  And you get a reply just similar to the above, again and again.

What if your hosting provider is so honest to explain to tell you that they are facing such as such problem, taking such as such steps to fix it, and doing such as such to prevent this from happening again in the future?  Will it not be better?

Problems can occur from time to time.  But customers can judge us by how we handle problems.  Instead of hiding the problem and keeping the customers in the dark, we could be more transparent and let customers know exactly what happens.

This way, we will not only pacify our customers, but could actually delight them!

Sometimes I hear complaints from web designers that their customers refuse to pay up, especially the last payment, after a web site is completed. No wonder sometimes designers register their domain names under their own names so that they can make sure the customers pay up, or lose their domain name!

I don’t have much experience on this and am not qualified to speak on this issue. I also don’t have very good solution to this. But I have a very naive idea.  if a customer refuses to pay up, just let him go and do not pursue after the money. Perhaps I have done something wrong that he refuses to pay up. Even if it’s not my fault, at least I have done something to help and bless his business.

You will surely not agree with my suggestion to let the customer go, to bless and not to curse, to look beyond our existence (we don’t exist just to make money), to thank the customer for giving business to us in the first place and for the money he has paid, to wish him well and never do anything to sabotage, even to continue to serve him If he ever comes back in the future.

There is a Chinese word called 舍得 (meaning “letting go”) which consists of two characters – 舍 and 得. Perhaps only when we learn to let go (舍), do we learn to how to truly gain (得).

Yes, I know I am naive   How about you?  What will you do?

From time to time customers asked me how I can make my web sites respond to enquiries, orders and requests by SMS instantly to their mobile phones.

For example if you fill up an enquiry form on my web site, you will not only receive a confirmation by email, but a thank you message by SMS instantly as well.

In another example, if you make payment for a product, you will receive a confirmation message by SMS immediately. You will also receive a follow-up SMS exactly one month later, reminding you of my brand

Some customers think I send out every SMS message manually from my handphone. But sooner or later they will find out it’s all automated. I can’t be sitting there to sticking to my phone to send out every SMS so quickly in response to every enquiry, 24 hours a day!

How to create such autoresponders by SMS? There is actually nothing complicated. You just need to subscribe to a bulk SMS messaging system, and then program your system to send out SMS messages using the system’s application programming interface (API). My system has been so programmed to make heavy use of SMS for customer service, branding and marketing as well.

There are many SMS bulk messaging service providers out there. Each SMS message sent costs money. Some charge very cheap rate per SMS, but your message might not reach your recipients at all. So don’t just look for cheap providers.

For me, I’m happily using Redisoft SMS System at the moment. Their system is good and stable. Macrokiosk is another good choice. Are you using any better provider? Please share with me.

Giving instant feedback to your customers can “wow” them and make them think your response is so prompt. So surprise your customers by innovating your online business by SMS today!