customer service

09/05/2019 By Jason Bean Leave a Comment

Great Marketing Strategy Nag Screen From Avast

When's the last time you were impressed and surprised by a company's marketing strategy towards you?

I'll admit it. If there's a free piece of software that works for me I will use it. And use it, and use it, and then some! I used Microsoft Defender and Windows Security Essentials for forever as my anti-virus and anti-malware services. And yes, they always worked well for me. I've never had a reason to not continue using them as I had been for years.

Well, with Windows 10 at some point I got the Avast free antivirus software installed and as before I've continued to use it because it seems to work fine for me, although I do miss my previous software installs.

Avast software includes them regularly nagging me about my PC running slow and they can improve it and blah-blah-blah. I usually click through the upgrade notifications and warnings and go along my merry way. I'm an above average computer user and can just take care of most of those things myself. It's amazing what regular maintenance activities and being aware of what's getting installed on my machines to begin with can make a difference.

Getting Surprised and Impressed by Avast

This evening though, as I was clicking through the screens to say "No Thanks" the screen featured below popped up.

This is a great piece of marketing strategy work in my opinion. They've taken the usual motivations for "No" and clearly give you reasons to trust them and give them a try while reinforcing the low-risk and zero price commitment barriers.

As you've probably experienced, you'll sign-up for a trial of something and before you know it the trial is over and you just got your account cha-chinged for a charge you really weren't prepared to confirm in the budget that month.

Key Marketing Strategy Points

Here are the key points I believe in this marketing strategy messaging above:

I'm reminded of the issues my PC was experiencing that this software says it will fix. In my case that's 445 performance issues (a personalized total for me as a customer)
Reminder that I can take advantage of the 60-day trial completely FREE
If I like it, on 11/04/2019 I will be charged the 1 year subscription rate (I frequently put reminders in my calendar now a couple of days ahead of these kinds of dates to remind me to take care and cancel it if I don't want it)
Additionally, they're letting me know (because of my behavior in the previous point) they're going to alert me a week before the deadline to cancel so I don't get surprised and irritated at them for automatically renewing my subscription.
Additional reminders via text
Nice comforting green color

I Might Actually Upgrade to the Premium Version

I'm actually pretty close to giving it a try and just seeing how I like it, and most importantly, did it clean-up those 445 performance issues and actually speed up my computer for me? One thing they left off that I think would have been beneficial, and it probably would be included in that email 7 days before! They've got an option to save more if you subscribe for 3 years at a time. It works out to $1.69/mnth billed at just over $60 for the 3 years.

What's not said in this advertisement is that this probably saves Avast a ton of headaches as well. Their customer service reps are probably tired of fielding calls, emails and online social media complaints about getting auto-billed and renewed for services.

When's the last time you put your customer's shoes on and thought about their experience with you and your company? Ask yourself how you'd like to be treated if the roles were reversed?

What would your sales and marketing processes look like then?

03/23/2018 By Jason Bean 3 Comments

Why You Need Live Chat Support for Your Website

In this day and age, everyone wants results quickly, and customer support is no different. Studies show that when the average customer needs help, they prefer to use a live chat service as opposed to calling customer support over the phone. Beyond making your customers happy, live chat services provide many other benefits.

Reduces Costs

Whether your company is big or small, people expect to get in touch with your customer service department when they need help. Most large companies use call centers that handle inquiries during normal operating hours. However, this is costly in both startup and per-hour fees for small businesses. Live chat allows operators to support multiple customers at once. In most cases, it's nearly 30 percent cheaper than hosting a call center.

Increases Sales

Studies show that customers who use live chat are nearly three times more likely to make a purchase on your website versus those who don't. Live chat helps your company generate sales and leads. When your customers have questions, they can quickly interact with representatives who know what they're talking about. Removing doubt is key in making the jump from just customers adding items to their shopping carts to actually checking out.

Makes Answering Common Questions Easy

How often does customer service get bogged down with answering repeat questions? Live chat systems make it easy and quick for employees to answer them with pre-written messages. It also provides more time to answer questions that require in-depth responses. This makes it easier for customer service to help more customers so that they don't have to wait forever to talk to someone.

Ensures Privacy

Businesses can never be too careful with customers' private information. When giving sensitive details such as credit card numbers, they put their trust in the reps who record the information. With call centers, it's possible for others to overhear these details. The more people who hear sensitive data, the more likely it is to fall into the wrong hands. With live chat, however, the only person who sees the data is the person who helps each customer. Because of that, it minimizes the number of people who can hear or see the data that your customers provide.

Provides Clear Communication

Live chat makes it easy for people to communicate clearly. How often do people call customer service centers only to have trouble understanding the person who's helping them? Live chat eliminates this by making it possible for people to see what the representatives say. Less confusion makes for much happier consumers.

Live chat provides a high satisfaction rate among customers and costs less than other customer support alternatives such as call centers. When using live chat to help customers, companies have nothing to lose but a lot to gain.

03/02/2016 By Jason Bean Leave a Comment

Offer the Best to Your Customers

Your customers deserve the best, and you should be able to easily provide them with reliable services. You should not have to run your business yourself. In fact, it is impossible for one person to answer questions, take orders, and provide excellent customer service to multiple customers at once. By having a call center assist you, you can make sure that each of your customers are taken care of in a speedy amount of time. You can lose sales by not being available to assist people when they are ready to make a purchase or need answers, but there are many services that can be helpful to you. There are a variety of call center services available.

Customer Service
You can have a professional who will make appointments for you and who will be able to handle returning phone messages. It can be nice to have professionals who can upsell and cross-sell products for you. If your customers have order or tracking questions, they can be answered withe ease. A customer service specialists can also help with returns and exchanges so that you can focus on other parts of your business. Specialists will use a personalized greeting for your business. You can rely on quality monitored and detailed reporting so that you are kept up-to-date with all of the details.

Increase Sales
You can offer services like live chat to increase your sales. This service allows customers to speak with trained professionals who can not only answer questions, but who can also recommend special products that customers may be interested in to drive up your sales. Your customers can multitask while using live chat services. They can be talking to someone to get assistance, and they can also be shopping since they are still on your site. You can benefit from the lower costs of using this type of service as well. Your customers deserve to be assisted quickly.

Improve the Satisfaction of Your Customers
When your customers can get quick answers, they will be ready to do business with you now and in the future. Whether you provide fast services through live chat, phones, or emails, your customers will be more likely to do business with you. You never want your customers to travel to your competitor's site for answers. Instead, you should make it easy for them to get assistance when they need it.

By providing the best services possible to your customers, you can gain their loyalty. You should think of each customer as an important part of your business today and tomorrow. If you treat them right, your customers will hopefully return again and again to do business with you. You want to make sure that you offer everything that your customers will need so that they can get answers in a speedy time frame.