Getting 20% more customers to write a review for you each month.
How much is that worth to you?
Just so you know…you can easily do that with trustENGINE by ConnectChief
Tag: review
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Top 10 reasons why visitors aren’t coming back to your business…
If you are like most small businesses then you spend a large amount of your marketing budget on acquiring new customers. And…
Between 60-80% of those customers do not return after their first visit!
This is bad news on many fronts…
Whats worse is, most small businesses have resigned to this statistic.
Its all about your mindset. Things can be very different if small business owners are to adopt a mindset similar to the larger and more advanced technology driven organizations of the world. Thankfully, you’ve got friends at connectchief who have the means to help you with that
Take a look at these top 10 reasons and see if some of them are also reasons why your customers are likely not coming back. If you can find out what your customers are thinking & feeling the most and if you can do something about fixing it then you can be on your way to phenomenal growth. And thats what we’re here to help you do!
While customer behaviors can vary, there are several common reasons why customers may choose not to return to a retail business.
- Poor Customer Service: Customers value excellent service. If they encounter rude or unhelpful staff, long wait times, or a lack of assistance, they may not want to come back.
- High Prices: If customers perceive that a retail business charges unreasonably high prices compared to competitors or the perceived value of the products or services, they may seek alternatives.
- Lack of Product Quality: Customers expect products that are reliable, durable, and of good quality. If they consistently experience issues with the quality or performance of products, they may look for better options elsewhere.
- Inadequate Product Selection: Customers appreciate having a wide range of products to choose from. If a retail business has limited selection or frequently runs out of stock, customers may be inclined to explore other stores with more options.
- Negative Online Reviews: With the prevalence of online review platforms, customers often research businesses before deciding where to shop. If a retail business has numerous negative reviews regarding service, product quality, or overall experience, it can deter potential customers from returning.
- Inconvenient Location: The location of a retail business can significantly impact customer retention. If it’s difficult to access, has limited parking, or is far from customers’ regular routes, they may opt for more convenient alternatives.
- Lack of Cleanliness and Maintenance: A clean and well-maintained store environment contributes to a positive customer experience. If a retail business is consistently dirty, disorganized, or in a state of disrepair, customers may perceive it as unprofessional and seek cleaner options.
- Ineffective Communication: Customers appreciate clear and timely communication from businesses. If a retail business fails to provide updates on product availability, changes in store hours, or upcoming promotions, customers may feel disconnected and choose to shop elsewhere.
- Unresolved Customer Complaints: How a retail business handles customer complaints is crucial. If a customer has a negative experience and the business fails to address their concerns or provide satisfactory solutions, it can lead to a loss of trust and loyalty.
- Lack of Personalization: Customers appreciate personalized experiences and recommendations. If a retail business fails to understand their preferences, provide tailored offers, or remember their previous interactions, customers may feel undervalued and opt for businesses that offer more personalized attention.
While addressing each of these factors can be challenging, businesses that prioritize customer satisfaction, invest in staff training, maintain product quality, and foster strong communication channels are more likely to retain customers and foster long-term loyalty.
At connectchief, we make software tools to help you power up your business.
We can help your business with addressing and getting ahead of many of the above issues –
- connectchief can help you measure user experience in real-time and figure out the corrective actions you need to take to align with customer expectations. Ask us about visitXP and our retail analytics tools
- connectchief can help you find new customers – Ask us about promoENGINE
- connectchief can help you with tools that keeps you on top of mind with your new visitors and help you to bring them back. Ask us about loyaltyENGINE
- connectchief can help you build a communication bridge with your customers without spamming them on email – ask us about how we help you send out Announcements and flash sales
- connectchief can help you collect reviews from customers and showcase them at your place of business. Ask us about trustENGINE
- connectchief can also help you receive customer complaints and communications directly so you can respond to them promptly. ask us about hearecho
- we’re always interacting with our clients and helping them solve problems, improve efficiency and simply do better through use of technology. If you have ideas or suggestions, we would love to hear from you
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Discover the Secret to Business Success: Understanding Your Customers’ Feelings
Did you know that understanding how your customers feel about your business is super important? Well, over 90% of businesses don’t really know what their customers think. But here’s the cool part: the businesses that do understand their customers tend to do really well. So, let’s learn how you can figure out what your customers are thinking and feeling!
The Problem with Surveys
You know those questionnaires businesses sometimes ask you to fill out? They might ask you how much you like their service or how likely you are to recommend them to others. Well, here’s the thing: those surveys often give answers that businesses want to hear, not what customers really think. It’s like trying to guess what your friends want to hear instead of telling the truth. That’s where the problem lies.
VisitXP – your secret weapon!
Imagine if there was a special tool that could help you understand your customers better. Well, guess what? There is! It’s called VisitXP, and it’s made just for small businesses like yours. Here’s how it works:
Real-Time Feedback:
VisitXP lets you hear from your customers right when they are at your business or interacting with your brand. This means you get to know what they think and feel right away. It’s like having a magic crystal ball that tells you what your customers are thinking and feeling. The nuanced feedback gathered from your customers by visitXP is then processed by our AI engines that turn this data in actionable items that you as the business owner can work on to align with what your customers are thinking and feeling.
Matching Customer Expectations:
Once you learn you get to work in aligning your business and its practices to customer expectations. You know how important it is to build trust with your customers, right? When expectations are met or exceeded, customers have a great experience! When your customers have a great experience at your business, they tell their friends about it. And when you listen to what your customers want and give it to them, they trust you even more. Trust is like having a superpower that makes your business grow!
Making Your Business Awesome:
Running a small business can be tough, but VisitXP makes it easier. By listening to your customers, learning from their feedback, and making ongoing changes based on what they say, you can make your business even better. It’s like having a secret weapon that helps you make smart decisions and keep your customers happy.
Understanding your customers is the key to making your small business awesome! Traditional surveys might not give you the whole truth, but with user experience tools from connectchief, you can get real-time feedback and make your customers happy. When you listen to your customers and meet their expectations, your business will grow and become super successful. Take our user experience tools for a try and effortlessly make your small business the best it can be!
We found this paper from Harvard Business Review to be strongly reflective of our methodology with visitXP. Our approach has many similarities to what the researchers suggest. Read more about their thoughts at Using AI to Track How Customers Feel — In Real Time
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How much does a typical small business in the US spend on online ads?
The amount that small businesses spend on Google or Facebook or other online Ads varies widely, and there’s no set “average.” The amount a small business spends on Online Ads depends on several factors, including:
- Industry and competition: Some industries are more competitive than others, and therefore require more investment to drive results.
- Budget: The budget available for advertising will directly impact the amount spent on Online Ads.
- Target audience: Reaching a specific target audience will impact the cost, as more specific targeting often requires a higher budget.
A small business can spend anywhere from a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars per month on Online Ads, but most small businesses typically spend between $500 and $1,000 per month. It’s important to note that the best budget for a small business will depend on their individual goals and advertising needs.
In addition, Businesses can spend anywhere from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars per year on third-party social media management and online review management, with most small to medium-sized businesses spending between $2,000 and $10,000 per year.
As opposed to the above, a small business can utilize the tools from connectchief to reach their target audience at almost half the cost of their typical online ads budget. Get started with connectchief for free while the software is in beta phase.
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Flash sales for retail businesses
Slow days are not good for any business. But every business knows they have to account for slow days.
With the tools in our connectchief chest, your business to make your slow days a little or a lot better. We want to talk to you about how you can take advantage of flash announcements to engage with customers on slower days.
We will take 2 examples –
- End of day flash sales
- Special time-limited promotions or announcements to draw in consumers
First, lets understand how flash sales work for you –
- Every business receives its personalized SNC code with connectchief.
- Businesses print & place these SNC codes as various places within their establishments.
- Customers scan these SNC codes to avail promotions, review your business and even follow your business.
- Customers who follow your business are the ones who are most likely to frequent your business and are the ones you should be engaging with on an ongoing basis
To do this we suggest doing the following –
- Regularly create time-bound promotions that can you can send out as announcements to your target customers
Some example activities that some of our businesses can do
Denise’s cupcakes has a few dozen cupcakes left over and there are only 2 hours left before store closing…
- Denise decides to go into connectchief & create a today only promotion announcing everything in the store at 50% off.
- She attaches this promotion to an ad that she associates with her store. Connectchief broadcasts this ad to all connectchief & insideconnect users within a 5 mile radius of Denise’s storefornt.
- She also sends the same promotion out as an announcement to all customers that follow her store. Connectchief then sends the announcement out to only those customers who are within a driving distance of Denise’s store and those who have previously marked Denise’s store as a favorite in their insideconnect app
Advantages for Denise’s cupcakes – They created amazing engagement by attracting existing and new customers during the final 2 hours of their day’s operations. New customers were able to try out Denise’s because of the flash sale pricing. Those who were in a short radius of Denise’s discovered here store. And Denise’s avoided having to throw away/discard product at closing time.
Advantages for customers – Those who loved Denise’s products were happy to come in and buy product on an impulse (the draw in was created by Denise). Those who had never tried Denise’s product were happy to come in and try out Denise’s products
Ron’s Sandwich shop can do exactly that same during the lunch hour …
Ron can create a lunch hour only promotion on a Tuesday and broadcast it out to his target customers in his area so he can turn the typical slow-at-lunch Tuesday into a more exciting day for business.
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Is it OK to incentivize customers to publicly review your business
It is absolutely OK to thank customers for the effort they make in writing a review for your business. However, its OK only as long as the business owner does not have any influence on what the customer writes on the review.
In fact, we’ve taken a few measures at connectchief to enable business owners to be able to get more real reviews from real customers.
The best time to ask for a review is when your business is top of mind
They say, theres a time and place for most things. So because you know your business better, we will prefer that you make that call. However, we are almost too sure that a customer is more likely to write a positive review for a business that they enjoy visiting, visit frequently or one at which they have just had a great experience.
Reviews are work. And the customer doesn’t need to do it. So its OK for you to return the favor.
Its perfectly OK to incentivize a customer to write a public review. We actually make it easy for you to offer such an incentive to your customer by enabling you to create a promotion that the customer can claim only after they write a review for your business. In complete transparency to visitors , such reviews are tagged on trustENGINE to indicate that the customer was incentivized to write the review.
Offering incentives indicates that you appreciate the customer and are seeking their support to let others know what they think of your business and its people, products and/or services.
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What businesses can benefit from connectchief?
We’re building connectchief as a collection of tools that help businesses be more efficient at utilizing their resources, tools can that help raise the value businesses can offer to their customers with the ultimate goal of helping you (the business owner) grow your business.
There are many aspects to connectchief and many more to be added as time progresses however we can share with you a few things that your business could do with connectchief. So if you are a business that can envision doing one or more of the things below, we have the tools to help you succeed.
- Engage your customers as soon as they get into your physical store (scan & connect codes for every business)
- Grow your business network by partnering / collaborating with non-competing businesses so you can promote/introduce each other to your customers (see more about promoEngine)
- Capture 1 click input from your visitors about their experience (visitXP is coming soon)
- Ask repeat customers or satisfied customers to review your business publicly (see trustENGINE)
- Offer an instant discount to a customer who reviews your business publicly (trustENGINE & promoENGINE working together)
- Provide customers an incentive to spend with you (PromoEngine)
- On slow days, attract your frequent users to come in (Flash sales with PromoEngine – coming soon)
- Run ads without spending an arm & a leg for them (Virtual billboards on PromoEngine)
- Run special promotions on your website without having to build sophisticated coupon code software (Promo codes with PromoEngine)
- Send out important announcements to your customers via connectchief (Customers already get enough email. Send them a message they can see when they think of you next)
- Let your visitors know you are hiring (some of your customers can be your best future employees.)
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How do I know trustENGINE is an unbiased platform for customer reviews?
trustENGINE’s mission is to bring customers and companies together by taking a fair, impartial and equal stance towards reviews. Every business has to follow the same rules, maybe free or the ones who have subscribed to our services.
We are committed to be fair to all business and our customers consistently and build trust through the act of honesty.
+ On trustENGINE reviews can never be deleted or hidden by the business owner.
Once the customers had created their account and verified it on trustEngine, when they write reviews they are the sole owners and only they are the who can edit or delete their reviews. We keep reviews of verified customers as long as they are users of trustEngine.
+ ‘Incentivized reviews’ are always tagged. We put transparency first.
Many times businesses offer incentives like, discount coupons, free stuff, or even receiving a product before its launched to motivate their customers to give feedback and write reviews. In return it helps businesses to attract more customers and increase their profits because of repeat business.
When we come across such customers and their reviews we tag it as an ‘incentivized review’
+ ‘Verified transactions’ are promoted.
A transaction takes place when a customer has purchased the product online or in store. When a customer wants to write a review on the trustEngine platform, they need to create their account. To write a review about the product they have purchased from a business, some proof of purchase is required to verify the transaction. Once that is done, the review is tagged as a verified transaction review.
+ Reviewers must have a verified contact information before they can write a review
We require reviewers to allow us to save their IP address and location when they are writing a review. This enables us to correlate the users location to the business location and flag any reviews that seem suspect.
+ We are constantly at work to block or mitigate fake reviews
Fake reviews both positive and negative about a product can harm the business as they sometimes have a positive impact on the customer buying decision. Some businesses, to promote their own products and business even hire people to write fake reviews and cause harm to their competitors. Fortunately our platform helps prevent this by a verifying process compulsory for all the users who want to write reviews on trustEngine.
It is mandatory, the reviewer loads proof of transaction done with the business, if not they cannot post their reviews on the site.
On the other hand our technical team constantly is developing and is improving the tools required to fight suspicious and fake reviews.