Articles Written by Rieva Lesonsky

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Rieva Lesonsky

Rieva Lesonsky is CEO of GrowBiz Media, a media and custom content company focusing on small business and entrepreneurship. Email Rieva at rieva@smallbizdaily.com, follow her on Twitter.com/Rieva and visit her website, SmallBizDaily.com, to get the scoop on business trends and sign up for Rieva’s free TrendCast reports.

Tuesday Tips: Is Your Customer Service Making or Breaking your Customer Experience?

By Rieva Lesonsky August 1, 2017 No Comments

No matter what industry you’re in, online reviews are becoming more and more important to business success. The power of customers’ unvarnished opinions means your customer experience has the potential to make or break your business.

A quick scan of the average business’s online reviews will show that it’s not all about—or even mostly about—the product or service your company provides. It’s really about the customer service. The most delicious restaurant meal won’t get a five-star rating if it’s served by an inattentive waiter. Your product won’t get a great review if customers can never get a live person on the phone when they need help setting it up.

Tuesday Tips: The Power of Proactive Customer Support

By Rieva Lesonsky June 27, 2017 No Comments

Customer support should mean more than just helping customers when they have problems with your product or service. Ideally, it means providing the support your customers need to ensure they never have a problem with your product or service in the first place. This type of proactive customer support has the power to make a huge difference in your customers’ satisfaction, spending and loyalty.

Here are three ways to provide proactive customer support:

Why Customers Complain and How It Can Help Your Business | Nextiva Blog

Tuesday Tips: Why Customers Complain and How It Can Help Your Business

By Rieva Lesonsky May 23, 2017 No Comments

Social media and online reviews have given your customers unprecedented abilities to complain about your business in front of the world. While that may sound like a bad thing, hearing the hard truth about your business via customer complaints can actually benefit you in the long run. What do customers complain about most—and what can you learn from it?

Poor customer service is the top cause of customer complaints, a study by Corra reports. More than half (52 percent) of survey respondents say they would complain about a service issue, 31.4 percent about a product problem, and 16.6 percent about a policy issue.

Chief among the specific service issues that motivate complaints are rude customer service reps, poor service at a store, uninformed customer service reps and slow service at check-in.

Tuesday Tips: What Happens When Customers Can’t Get No Satisfaction?

By Rieva Lesonsky April 11, 2017 No Comments

What does a small business have to do to create a great customer experience? Do you have to dazzle customers with innovative products, anticipate their every need before they know what it is, or coddle them in a luxurious environment? It's not that hard: According to a recent study by InMoment, the key to a great customer experience is simply satisfaction.

“Satisfaction” is the number-one emotion that creates a positive customer experience and leads to brand loyalty, consumers in the study say. While businesses believe customers want to feel important, or be treated as if they are part of something special, customers’ real expectations are much easier to meet: They just want businesses to keep their promises.

Tuesday Tip: 6 Things Customers Expect from Your Customer Service

By Rieva Lesonsky March 28, 2017 No Comments

How well is your business’s customer service meeting your customers’ expectations? To understand that, you first need to know what your customers’ expectations are. The 2016 State of Global Customer Service Report from Microsoft has some insights.

First, know that customer service is more important than ever. More than two-thirds (67 percent) of respondents say good service is “very important” to whether or not they do business with a company. Six out of 10 have stopped doing business with a company because of poor customer service.

How to Give Generation Z the Customer Service They Expect

By Rieva Lesonsky February 14, 2017 No Comments

Sometimes defined as Generation Z, other times as young Millennials, consumers aged 18 to 24 have strong opinions—including a whole new set of expectations about customer service. A new study reveals some trends you need to know about to effectively serve these customers.

Tuesday Tip: 5 Simple Steps to Using Data for Better Customer Service

By Rieva Lesonsky January 24, 2017 No Comments

Customers today have more options than ever before. They can compare your products and services to your competitors at the click of a smartphone button. That means customer service is often the deciding factor in whether you attract and retain a customer—or whether your competitor does.

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