Online Home Business

How Do You Treat Customers In An Online Home Business?

Copyright © 2005, Alan Cheng

With an online home business, many people wonder what the right way is to treat customers. After all, you can't see their grumpy faces and therefore don't know whether they're happy or annoyed with the purchase.

Let me tell you a secret. In an online home business the ancient rule still applies - "Treat your customers as if they are your boss for they pay your salary". Yes, it's just as important on the internet as it is with a normal business.

So how do you make your customers happy when the internet business is so impersonal? The key is to be as personal and as warm as possible. Below are my personal tactics which I've used over the years. Some gained via reading information products and some gained via errors with my own online membership site. Enjoy.

1. Thank you emails

Often after a customer has bought your product the relationship ends there. They'll receive the receipt for their payment and nothing more.

What if we immediately followup with a 'thank you' email and also tell them what other products they can buy which they may find interesting? Your customers would appreciate you for being thoughtful and think "wow, I didn't think this kind of service existed online". You have surprised your customers and you're selling to them at the same time. Kill two birds with one stone.

And who says you need to stop there? You can send them an email every two weeks reminding them that they have bought from you before and that you have some other products which they may be interested in.

How Do You Treat Customers In An Online Home Business?

If you have not already done so, go and send your thank you emails and sell to your customers. This sort of work can be automated by using auto responders. I recommend www.onlinemoneymachine/auto which is reliable and has worked wonders with following up with my customers.

2. Meet the expectations.

A lot of people are angry if what they bought does not match the description as advertised on your web page.

How Do You Treat Customers In An Online Home Business?

Think about it. If they bought what they expected and your sales page is clear, they have nothing to complain about. This applies to normal customers of course :-)

So read through your sales page again and carefully say to yourself "does my product or service really deliver what it says?"

How Do You Treat Customers In An Online Home Business?

3. Over Deliver

This is one of the most powerful techniques to use to make your customers go "WOW".

I remember the first time I had dinner at a Chinese restaurant with my girlfriend when I was studying at University.

The owner asked me that if it was my first time there. I told him so and in the middle of my dinner, he asked if he could have a chat with us. He sat down with an orange juice and offered us an orange juice as well on the house. We had a quick chat for about 5 minutes. He got to know our names and also what we studied and we learnt he was called Eric - a happy restaurant owner. Eric left us to get on with our meal and smiled to us when we left. We felt the service at the restaurant was top notch with Eric being our new friend.

Needless to say we became a regular there. We called him by name and so did he. We didn't get any more orange juice on the house but it didn't matter.

Please learn from Eric. Try and over-deliver when someone buys from you. With your business, offer unadvertised bonuses and offer additional help for them such as installing the software for them at no extra cost. Do something which they don't expect you to do. In turn they'll stick with you like glue.

4. Personal Approach

Your business is online and people are afraid to do business with you. So add a bit of personal touch to your business:

- show your photo on the web page.

- send emails to your prospects calling them by their first names. People feel closer to you when you address them by their first name.

- crack a joke now and again and show that you are an actual person writing them an email.

With these advice on how to treat your customers, your next step now is to study your own online home business and think of ways to implement the techniques. Make your customers buy from you again and also make them advertise for you.

Go and take action now. Reading a useful article becomes useless if you don't act on it.

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