Internet Business Blog

Stubsy from Financial Independence had the distinct pleasure of inflating my ego a little bit on Tuesday by publishing an interview he did with me earlier in the week. He runs a solid blog with great tips and advice in regards to gaining your financial independence. I encourage everyone to check it out!

- Also, you may notice me tinkering with a new commenting system here on IBFTM. A big thanks to Intense Debate for letting me beta test their software!

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Customer service can quite literally make or break a business on the internet. If you have an exceptionally high level of customer service, it may be enough to sway potential and repeat customers to purchase from your site instead of a high profile competitor. On the other hand - If you have a hazardously low level of customer service, you may receive unwanted criticism that will follow your business to all depths of the internet, eventually affecting your sales and reputation as a whole.

What are they saying about you?

1. Google your website. You can find out a lot about what others think of your customer service by simply plugging your web site’s name into any major search engine such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN. I often refer to the term as Googling because I am a Google addict, but bear in mind that any search engine will do the trick. Also, be sure to continue after the first page of results. Go five or more pages deep, and click on random pages after that. You never know where a customer review or opinion is hiding.

2. Ask your customer base. Create a survey and email your former and current customers how they think that you’re doing. I’ve found that as long as you keep the questions short and sweet, they will usually answer them.

3. Ask yourself. Often times, being completely honest with yourself will provide incredible results, after all, who has more insight about how you are truly doing than yourself? If I am lacking in any particular area whether it be customer service related or otherwise, deep down I am always the first to know about such a flaw.

How to help raise your level of customer service:

1. Spend more time serving your customers. We only have so many hours in each business day, so it is crucial how we spend them. I’ve found that setting aside specific blocks of time each day dedicated to serving my customers has really helped to increase sales, productivity, and customer satisfaction.

2. Respond to emails and voice mails promptly. Nothing will cause you to miss a sale or lose a repeat customer by not responding to their phone calls or emails in a timely fashion. The general rule of thumb is 24 hours or one business day for a response, but I would go so far as to say that If you do not respond within 4 business hours the sale is as good as gone. Make it a point to try and check your email and voice mail multiple times per day, every single day.

3. Write down the areas that you need to improve upon. Depending on your personality (and ego) this can be a very difficult and painful process, but I encourage you to be completely honest with yourself. If you do not make note of your flaws as a customer service representative or business owner you will not be able to fix them. As a business owner, customer service is generally only one of many hats that you will wear during the business day. Make note of the problem, or you will likely forget that the problem even exists – until you lose the sale or even worse a valuable customer.

In Conclusion

If you’ve found that your customer service needs some work the good news is that it’s a very fixable situation. Follow the steps that I have outlined for you above and you will notice more repeat sales, good publicity, and most importantly - a very satisfied customer base.

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In the last three months, this blog has grown very quickly so I’ve decided to pull the plug on the news and article portion of ePursuit.net. Originally, the news and article section had been the intent of this website, but then I discovered blogging and my client list grew much quicker than I had anticipated, swallowing up most of my free time. Besides that, there are literally a million websites you can go to find internet related news and articles so why re-invent the wheel when I don’t have to?

For my loyal readers this is not a bad thing. In fact, this is a Great thing. Expect me to focus more of my time on this blog, Paul Bradish: Internet Business for the Masses. Since I will be spending more time here, 3 major things will happen:

Longer, well thought out posts

Gone are the days of quick blurbs about next to nothing. Instead of having to construct a blog entry within 20 minutes, I will now have 2 hours. You may have noticed the quality of my posts having gone up over the past week – that is by no coincidence! I’m definitely raising the bar so expect higher quality on a daily basis.

Better design

This blog has always been all about KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) – and I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback about its sharpness and ease of use, but let’s be realistic. There is always code that can be re-done and widgets or plug ins to make life easier. I will now have more time to dedicate to such design aspects and now I can finally redo the about me page.

Side projects galore

The Google Co-op search engine has been a big hit and I’d like to play around with more technology, especially anything that is web 2.0 related since that appears to be the present and future. I have many side projects on the back burner and I can now put more focus on them. This includes but is not limited to:

1. SEO Tools
Aaron Wall creates some amazing Search Engine Optimization (SEO/SEM) tools. I would love to integrate such tools on this blog as well – and think that my loyal readers and casual visitors could really benefit from such a side project.

2. Job Board
I’ve been playing with a fun and promising job board script that many other sites have been using around the blogosphere. Many bloggers do not have the luxury of writing content full time so I think that having a technology related job board could be a success if done correctly.

3. Link Directory
Link directories can be a lot of work to set up but once the hard part is done you can set them to auto pilot in many ways. I would like to set up a link directory as a side project here to possibly collect many of the greatest blogs as well as the undiscovered gems hiding in the blogosphere.

4. Social Network
I’ve always been intrigued by social networks. I would love to integrate a network into this site that can tie into the commenting system. This is highly debatable whether or not it is a feasible idea or a recipe for disaster – but I’d love to give it a shot at some point down the road.

5. Blog Store
E-Commerce is in my blood. It’s only been four months since I sold off my first e-commerce venture, and I’m already getting that ‘itch’ to go for it again. I would like to channel this energy into a web store that runs alongside this blog selling digital content (such as e-books and audio) as well as ePursuit.net coffee mugs and the like.

As you can tell, much of this is only in the earliest of concept stages and when I do a project, I tend to take my time and get it done right and see it through completion. Who’s to say what this “blogging” path will bring, but one thing’s for sure – Business is good and I love sharing what I have learned to make it this far. Couple that with the past few weeks of blogging higher quality content and networking with new friends in the blogosphere and I have been having a blast.

Just to reiterate: The ePursuit.net article and news site will no longer be updated, but the blog and side projects are still very much alive!

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