Competition is fierce for a share of the marketplace, regardless of the type of business you’re in. It’s one thing to actively attempt to build your business, but so many owners don’t realize they’re actually killing their businesses with various factors they have in place. You need to complete a thorough inventory of your company practices and procedures to ensure you’re not self-sabotaging and chasing away customers.
Technology Gaffes
A slow website will kill your business. Really. Rather than sit through a slow website loading, your customers will abandon you for the next company on their search list. You won’t just lose them with a slow website, you’ll chase them away and straight into the arms of your competition. Another website issue is one that won’t load on mobile devices. You need to check on your own mobile device to ensure your website loads correctly. Sometimes fonts that seem great on a laptop screen are completely illegible on your phone. Other times your graphics won’t load correctly. Whoever you’re paying to create your site should be checking it across multiple devices to guarantee it looks exactly as you’ve contracted it to look.
Customer Service Slip-Ups
No one can be perfect one hundred percent of the time. This includes you and your staff. You will have times where you don’t deliver the best customer service of which you know you’re capable. What do you do when that happens? You identify the problem and take the necessary steps to correct it, of course. If you have a repeat customer and a certain staff member rubs that customer the wrong way, you get someone else to wait on that customer. You encourage your staff members to leave their personal issues at the door. When that’s not an option for them, you instead encourage them to take care of what they need to by taking a day or two off because that’s what personal, sick and vacation time is for. When you have a bad day yourself, you do your best to compartmentalize it so you don’t take it out on your customers or your staff.
What about bad reviews? No matter that bad review’s origin, you address that with the customer by listening and then trying to set it right. Always respond to a written bad review with the information about how you’re attempting to fix the situation. An unanswered bad review gives nothing but negative information for potential customers to see.
From slow websites to bad reviews, there are ways to fix your problems before they kill your business.