How Big Does Your Business Feel?

There are many ways when being a small business can give you an advantage as you seek to remain efficient or win customers. Other times appearing to be larger than you actually are is a wiser move. How can your business create the impression of being bigger? Here are four ideas that may help.

Incorporation
An incorporated business is perceived to be a bigger company. Incorporation can be a quick, inexpensive and relatively easy task – it might even enable you to pay less tax and take more out of your business. Working out roughly whether you would be better off as an LLC company is simple enough to do, although you should seek specific advice from a qualified accountant before making definite plans to change the structure of your business.

Grow Your Brand
Successful big businesses realize the importance of having a world-class brand and making full use of its potential. Branding is much more than your choice of corporate colors, typefaces or catchy strapline, of course. Branding is best defined as the experience customers have when they engage with your business, so it extends to such things as how you dress and how you answer the phone or communicate by email. Your business might be small, but that doesn’t mean you should have limited ambitions. Having a brilliant brand can help you to punch above your weight.

Website Design Is Your Canvas
On the whole, large companies have good websites. Having budget to commission a top agency helps, of course. When potential customers want to find out more about you, chances are they will look online, which is where you can come unstuck if your website looks like a basic DIY job, complete with gaudy colors, poorly chosen typefaces, terrible imagery or badly written copy.  If you want to appear bigger, now could be the perfect time to improve your website or (budget permitting) get a brand new one done. You might be a small business, but there’s no reason you cannot have a website that makes a big impression – often for a fraction of the money spent by the ‘big boys’. While you’re at it, make sure your email address looks the part, too. People who work for larger businesses don’t normally use free webmail addresses (eg Gmail, Yahoo! or AOL) for business emails.

Use An Impressive Address
Including your address on your website could immediately show that yours is a home-based business. Even if not, potential customers can quickly search online to find your exact location, and if that’s in a residential area, they’re likely to work out you’re a small home-based business. Paying for a PO Box address can provide a solution or you could rent a trading address, perhaps in a more desirable area of town. There’s nothing wrong with being a home-based business, of course, but bigger companies aren’t usually operated from someone’s home.

SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is a great start to creating your very own customer service legends. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

We Want To Do Business With Your Business

If you are looking for a IT Service Management software solution for your business you want to know many things about that software product.

Is it scalable, so that it will work now and then continue to grow and support my business needs in the future?

How is easy is it to load, implement and use? How quickly will my employees be able to use the software to support our customer’s needs?

Of course the investment your company needs to make to bring this solution online can be a primary concern.

Considering how customizable the SMART Service Desk software is the pricing is not like buying a new car where looking, liking and purchasing is a very set process and amount.

SMART Service Desk software enables comprehensive, best practice based Incident / Case management processes via intuitive, easily adopted, enterprise scale web technology. Integrates core service and support components into one complete Help Desk solution which help you to reduce service costs and increase service delivery operational efficiency. Manage service issues from the initial call; too complete job and service restoration. With SMART Service Desk you can reduce call volumes and encourage user self-service by letting users search FAQs, approved solutions, and workarounds. You can use Increase customer / user satisfaction ratings using surveys.

SMART Service Desk IT Service Management software can be either or both a desktop or cloud service based for your solutions and what will be best for your individual business needs.

We think that our price structure will be both surprising and very affordable for your small to medium sized business.

Our solutions are not only scalable but we have different solutions that can be a better fit for your specific business needs. Our SMART Service Desk Plus delivers a customer-friendly IT self-service portal, powerful dashboards and reporting, and superior mobility to your organization. With SMART, IT organizations can support ITIL® best practices for IT Service Management (ITSM), consolidating the service desk function with the processes that underpin the efficient delivery and support of service, With PinkVERIFY® certified ITIL® processes in SMART Service Desk Plus; you can be assured of the best practices you will implement for your process and workflow.

SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is a great start to creating your very own customer service legends. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

Customers Care … Does Your Business Care?

Does that headline’s question sound just a bit harsh? In recent surveys customer often vent about the direct interaction with a business that leaves them wondering if that business really cares about them as a customer.

Can I relate a recent story that came to my attention? A customer needed to put a shelf in her laundry room and the width of the area was 71 inches. When she approached her local home improvement store to cut one inch of the width of a standard 6 foot (72 inch) board she was told they didn’t (wouldn’t) do that. They lost a sale… they lost many potential future sales… and they let down a person who needed a simple fix. Did they care? Did they want that person to spend $50 on a power saw for a single cut?

Some business seem to feel that customer care or customer service only occurs post sale and nothing could be further from the truth.

The question in the above case could be that the individual employee let down both the customer and the company. But, the company may never get another chance to make the employee (if it was) error right. Does this happen in your business?

Nationally there are very few (2 or 3) home improvement companies. Do you want to guess which one this was? OK, was it Orange or was it Blue?

Poor customer service can negatively impact a business in a variety of ways. This is especially true for small businesses that rely on repeat business and positive word-of-mouth advertising for its success. In addition to running the risk of alienating current customers with sub-standard service levels, chronically poor service can impact the business’ potential for attracting new customers as well.

A reputation for poor service can be hard to shake. It can keep other businesses from partnering or working with you. It also can turn away good employment candidates who might assume that if customers are treated poorly, employees are treated badly as well.

Customers who experience poor service levels often tell their friends and family members about the bad experience to warn them away. This will cost your business potential customers. People will have already formed a negative opinion of your business before ever setting foot in your door.

Customers Care … Does Your Business Care?

SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is a great start to creating your very own customer service legends. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk

600 West Ray Road

Suite D-3

Chandler Arizona 85225

602-235-0975

info@smartservicedesk.com

http://smartservicedesk.com

Is Your Planning and Production Aligned?

Customer demand in today’s consumer-driven, multi-channel marketplace is more volatile than ever. Yet the majority of manufacturers are still using outdated production planning methods, such as spreadsheets and plant by plant scheduling, to make critical planning decisions.

The JDA Vision 2015 Supply Chain Market Study is based on a global executive survey, with responses coming from 17 countries across many industries. An important take-away from the production planning and scheduling section of this report is that these methods are not well aligned with executives’ stated strategies.

To deal with these complexities and better respond to demand volatility while balancing customer services levels and supply chain costs, more than 8 in 10 responding companies, and all respondents over $5 billion in revenue, are turning to segmentation strategies. By segmenting their customer base and products, they can align them with the production planning strategy that best fits each segment’s volume and service needs, such as make to order vs. make to stock. By aligning the segments to the best production planning and supply chain strategies, companies can reduce cycle times, lower inventory levels, improve margins and provide differentiated levels of service.

Even if your company is nowhere near the 5 billion mark you make want to consider tailoring products and services to your local consumers. 

We all know the old saying, ”Happy Wife = Happy Life.” Well a successful business must have “Happy Customers.” 

If your business has at least a one year history you can generate for the next twelve months based on historical sales data, the consensus forecast generated during the demand review and with inputs from sales and marketing teams and the demand planner. But, only if your business the necessary data with which to pull the facts need to make your forecasts. What software or data collection does your business have in place to track all the aspects need to do future sales, production and planning forecasting?

Do you have a way to focus on more information, less data? This can be another key to successful sales and operations planning using clean, current, and accurate data. Plans are often slowed down by the effort of gathering data that has minimal importance to the overall project. It is important to ensure that you know exactly what business problem you are trying to resolve and understand the minimum data necessary for the project.

SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is a great start to creating your very own customer service legends. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

Does Your Marketing Support Your Customer Service?

Great Customer Service is at the heart of all successful companies. It can help you develop a loyal customer base and improve relationships with your customers.

In our current ultra-competitive market, it is tempting to chase new business. However, to boost revenue and profitability in your business, your best bet is to focus on customer retention and build customer loyalty. Loyal customers come back time and again; they will also promote your business through word-of-mouth recommendation. By building a long-term customer base, you can reduce the costs of looking for new customers and that will improve the bottom line.

Great service helps turn customers into ambassadors for your business, they will buy your products and services regularly and give you valuable feedback on your performance as well as supporting you through good times and bad.

Even the smallest business needs to plan and control its customer communications. Customer relationship management (CRM) is not the preserve of big corporations. To succeed, every business needs to take a customer-centric approach and build good relationships with their customers based on trust. People buy from companies that they Know - Like - Trust.

You have to work at your customer relationships. Never ever take your best customers for granted. Keep ion touch with them so you can respond as their needs evolve and reward them for their loyalty.

The very sad reality is that customers don't usually complain; most just go elsewhere. Others not only complain, but demand action and meaningful compensation. Most businesses handle complaints poorly. Set up a customer complaints procedure and respond promptly. Resolve the issue so that you don't make the same mistake twice and tell the customer how you have dealt with it.

One very telling indicator of an effective marketing team is when leads have clear expectations for how your business' products and services will help them. And when leads have clear expectations, the transition from lead to customer, as well as that customer's subsequent experience as a customer, can go much more smoothly. This is how Marketing can help prevent customer loss, since often customer churn is the result of misleading expectations that can be attributed back to misleading marketing campaigns.

For example, if your marketing team was relying heavily on the messaging that the indoor paint you sell dries in minutes, but in reality customers report that it takes hours, your marketing team could rectify the false expectations they were setting in their marketing campaigns.
‘
SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is a great start to creating your very own customer service legends. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

Is Your Marketing Tied To Your Customer Service?

Perhaps we should ask how closely they are aligned.  Has your customer service ever learned about a marketing change from a customer interaction?

A new buzz phrase is CX. which stands for Customer Experience. Customer experience is increasingly defined through online social interaction with companies. Consumers carry in their pockets powerful computers, which they use to do research, shop, and communicate their experiences with suppliers and their products to an online community of family, friends, colleagues, and others. That fairly new online CX now has the power to make or break a new product or even a well-established company.

Social media used to be best for sharing brief content and counting up the “likes” to measure success. But consumers now use social media to do far more: to shop, to share purchases with friends, and to launch complaints. After all, posting to a page or launching a # hashtagged tweet is much simpler than calling a customer service phone number or searching for a contact form on a website.

If marketing makes a promise or even implies a benefit and your customer experience (CX) feels out-of-step or feels you under-delivered your customer service will hear or read about it. If they are caught unprepared it will take them precious time to research the facts so they can respond properly.

That proper response can mean the difference from a minor error moving on to major news story and customers lighting up social media. It can become a brush fire that can consume your good will faster than it can be rebuilt.

Remember that all contact via social media has to be understood in a customer service context. What’s unique about handling inquiries occurring on Facebook, Twitter, and their counterparts is that the communications are public, very public and there isn’t much chance to filter responses before they are seen by ;large groups of readers. You’ll need to be responsive and audience-aware to use social media for the strongest customer service.

Customer engagement has been discussed widely, numerous high-profile conferences, seminars and round-tables have either had CE as a primary theme or included papers on the topic.

Customer engagement marketing places conversions into a longer term, more strategic context, and is premised on the understanding that a simple focus on maximizing conversions can, in some circumstances, decrease the likelihood of repeat conversions CE aims at long-term engagement, encouraging customer loyalty and advocacy through word-of-mouth. Thought similar, customer engagement and customer commitment are distinct constructs.

In store, or offline customer engagement is best leveraged by associates’ extensive brand and product knowledge, and the digital access that supports it. Equipped with a tablet that also delivers store and sales training, educated on-floor associates become brand ambassadors who can show consumers high-definition product imagery and video to help cross-sell, up-sell, grow relationships and foster loyalty.

Online customer engagement is qualitatively different from offline engagement as the nature of the customer’s interactions with a brand, company and other customers differ on the internet. Discussion forums or blogs, for example, are spaces where people can communicate and socialize in ways that cannot be replicated by any offline interactive medium. Customer Engagement marketing efforts that aim to create, stimulate or influence customer behavior differ from the offline, one-way, marketing communications that marketers are familiar with. Although customer advocacy, for example, has always been a goal for marketers, the rise of online user generated content can take advocacy to another level.

SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is a great start to creating your very own customer service legends. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

Looking For Affordable IT Service Management Software

If you are looking for the IT Service Management Software solution for your business you want to know many things about that software product.

Is it scalable, so that it will work now and then continue to grow and support my business needs in the future?

How is easy is it to load, implement and use? How quickly will my employees be able to use the software to support our customer’s needs?

Of course the investment your company needs to make to bring this solution online can be a primary concern.

Considering how customizable the SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is the pricing is not like buying a new car where looking, liking and purchasing is a very set process and amount.

SMART Service Desk software enables comprehensive, best practice based Incident / Case management processes via intuitive, easily adopted, enterprise scale web technology. Integrates core service and support components into one complete Help Desk solution which help you to reduce service costs and increase service delivery operational efficiency. Manage service issues from the initial call; too complete job and service restoration. With SMART Service Desk you can reduce call volumes and encourage user self-service by letting users search FAQs, approved solutions, and workarounds. You can use Increase customer / user satisfaction ratings using surveys.

SMART Service Desk software can be both local or cloud service based for what best fits your solutions and what will be best for your individual business needs.

We think that our price structure will be both surprising and very affordable for your small to medium sized business.
Our solutions are not only scalable but we have different solutions that can be a better fit for your specific business needs. Our SMART Service Desk Plus delivers a customer-friendly IT self-service portal, powerful dashboards and reporting, and superior mobility to your organization. With SMART, IT organizations can support ITIL® best practices for IT Service Management (ITSM), consolidating the service desk function with the processes that underpin the efficient delivery and support of service, With PinkVERIFY® certified ITIL® processes in SMART Service Desk Plus; you can be assured of the best practices you will implement for your process and workflow.

Is your company looking for customer service solutions to help you deal with customer interaction? SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is your answer. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

Is Your Customer Service Listening?

Are you listening to understand or are you listening to simply reply? Do you understand and appreciate the difference? Does this apply to everyone that is part of your businesses’ customer “service?” What is your action plan for what you are hearing?

Effective listening is perhaps the most valuable skill your Customer Service team can have. It is the linchpin in a needs-based, consultative service strategy that determines and delivers what the customer needs and wants. Is your customer service team as effective as it could be? You can teach them how to listen to the customer to resolve the real problem, avoid future difficulties and keep your business running cost-effectively.

Listening properly enables your customer service staff to draw customers into an interactive conversation in which they can ask insightful questions, probe for reactions and respond to those customer reactions correctly.

When it comes to customer service, your people make the difference. Hearing is not the same as listening; in other words, receiving sounds is not the same as paying attention to their true meaning.

From the rational and tangible perspective, really listening is the key to get to know your customers better, understand their needs and get to the basis of their problems. Listening helps us provide a better service by allowing us to focus on truly effective actions that generate the results your customer expects (and deserves).

Your most precious asset, no matter what business you have, is your existing customers. You expended considerable effort to entice these folks to do business with you. So why not intensely focus on their behavior as they are doing business with you? Talk to them and listen carefully.

Some folks refer to this as real customer engagement. No matter the current buzz words you apply the skill of listening to your customer is a vital one. This skill must become pervasive throughout your company.

Let’s look at the following definition; Customer Engagement (CE) is considered as a behavioral manifestation toward the brand or firm that goes beyond transactions. In some businesses Customer Engagement becomes efficient Customer Management… Do manage or listen to your customers?

SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is a great start to creating your very own customer service legends. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

Who Sets The Customer Service Standard?

The real question that is almost not talked about is “who” sets the standard for customer service, the business or the customer? When you think about the question is your response, of course the business sets the customer service standard. But, if your customer is able to choose “who” to buy from then the customer just may be the one who sets the standard of care. 

If the customer chooses your competitor over you and you are both selling the same product and at the same price then what made them choose the other guy? Was it customer service? Yes, location, hours of operation and other factors can enter into the buying decision. But never underestimate the factor of post-sale service.

When customers patronize a business, they expect to be sold quality services and products. Of course, customers also assume that the salesperson or customer representative gives them quality service as well. That’s why having customer service standards are important to your company.

Once a business sets its customer service goals or standards, employees need frequent feedback on their performance so that they know if they are reaching the companies’ goal. Further, to ensure that customer service goals will be met, managers should recognize and reward teams and individuals who demonstrate outstanding customer service or who meet or exceed their customer service goals.

Business also need to make sure that the standards they set are actually meeting the wants and needs of their customers. While you can watch the sales level increase or decrease.  They can also just ask the customer through a survey of some type, “How are we doing?” That can and should include customer service as well as product and service questions.

Chances are, you’ve heard plenty of stories, where a customer encounters bad service from an employee or manager at a business and tells everyone about their experience. An angry customer tells all of their friends who patronize the store or writes bad reviews about the business on the Internet. Either way, word gets around that your business is not a great place to purchase from.

In today’s social media context news travels fast, real fast. News services constantly monitor social media looking for juicy stories. The news is happy to present that funny or tragic story that they know will draw viewers.

Your business may have amazing products, but if your customer service standards aren’t very high, you won’t get far. When customers come in contact with every person in the business, they make a judgment about how they feel about the company. With each client you sell services to, your reputation is at stake. That’s why treating each transaction with a customer with respect and consideration is vital.

So who sets your companies' customer service standards?

SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is a great start to creating your very own customer service legends. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

What Is Your Standard For Customer Care?

Companies provide various products and services to their customers in exchange for payment.  Customer expect different levels of care both pre and post purchase. The standard of customer care varies wildly from company to company. Future purchases may well hinge on how well the company meets that unknown standard of expected customer care or service. How does a company meet a standard that is both unknown and ever changing?

In some cases companies actually publish guidelines for customer that outline the manner and way that they expect or intend to deal with customers at least post purchase.

Customer care has evolved well beyond the posting of an 800 phone number that allowed customer to call and make inquiries about product usage and problems. From social media to direct phone based apps are just part of the mix that customer have come to expect (demand) when dealing with today’s product sales and service interactions. Companies that fall behind find the customer quickly moves to companies that provide (meet) current customer expectations.

Does your companies Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) meet today’s customer service expectations?

Each market had its own unique regulations and protocols for customer acquisition, service, switching, billing, and communications with market operators and utilities. An astute team of energy market experts recognized that the cumbersome, resource-intensive CIS systems developed for regulated rate payers would never work in these markets. Instead, a new breed of competitive retailers would require a technology platform that could support a very different revenue management model, a model that enabled faster market entry, quicker addition of new products and services, agile pricing and supply contracts, accelerated cash flow, and a significantly lower cost to serve.

Do regulations affect the way you are constrained to deal with customer interactions? 

Customers expect trouble free usage, at a known level of performance as well as education that enhances the standard Customer Care with local resources and quick delivery. Does your company provide customer service contracts that go beyond just product repair and maintenance?

When your buys a Customer Care Package you know that they expect a service team to support them, while they work or use your product. Does your Customer Care Package support give access to your benefits at any sales office or locations?

SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is a great start to creating your very own customer service legends. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

What To Do When Customer Service Fails

Most companies care about their customers.  Without them a business is “out of business.” The motive to care is really related to survival. Mo matter how hard you try to please 100% of your customers it is not always possible.  What does your company do when caring isn’t enough?

A recent survey placed Comcast customer service near the bottom of the list. Many online stories cover at least one side of the story when it comes to the wrong way to do customer service. Not all customers are created equal, but they are all people and should be treated as such. Some customers spend more, some spend less. Others don’t spend at all. But alienating a customer based on any type of disconnect – be it looks, communication, or any other factor – is a huge customer service fail.

The first principle of creating customer loyalty is “Be the Customer.” “Walk in the customer’s shoes” is common sense insight, but certainly not common practice at some companies. Should “People over Profit” be the core value at your business, given the customer’s emotional toll from a catastrophic event, companies certainly should be more empathetic.

A company could use an event to build brand loyalty by telling its customers they were waiving the cost of any lost any lost unit. Instead it only reinforced the collective customer perception that some companies are the worst at customer service.

What is it with cable providers and their customer service? Another horror story, recounted by Time, comes from former Engadget editor-in-chief, Ryan Block who was given a rough ride by a “customer retention specialist” when he called to cancel his contract with Comcast.

As the recording of the call (or at least, an eight-minute snippet of it) proves, sometimes an agent needs to know when to give up.

In a painstaking call that often feels like a political debate rather than a customer service query, Ryan asks multiple times if it’s possible to arrange to cancel the service over the phone and the unrelenting agent continually refuses to supply an answer, instead coming back with questions asking why he wants to disconnect.

Ryan eventually managed to get disconnected, but the impact on Comcast’s reputation suffered a big blow, and the company was forced to issue a statement outlining its embarrassment at the way the customer was spoken to. The Comcast cancellation story is notorious for the agent’s over aggressiveness.

SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is a great start to creating your very own customer service legends. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

Choose The Right IT Service Management Software

Is your company or your business in search of IT Service Management Software to help with your internal and external IT management?

SMART Service Desk is a robust and highly flexible IT Service Management (ITSM) application, built on ITIL best practices that help customers and users meet the dynamic needs of a growing business and achieve the highest level of service quality, delivery and performance. We offer the best location or cloud based experience you’ll find in the industry.

Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, SMART Service Desk Software, is a vendor for ITIL Best Practice & ISO 20000 Standards Service management (ITSM) Solutions, Service Desk, CRM, EAM and support software for medium to large enterprises. SMART Service Desk has key customers, such as Toyata, Mitsubishi Motors, Saudi Credit bureau, Tamer Pharma and Oman Arab Bank. Founded in 2008, SMART Service Desk Software is a privately held firm with offices in the United States, India and Partner offices in UK, Saudi Arabia, Oman, UAE and Qatar.

SMART Service Desk is the leader in Help Desk, IT Service Management, Quality Management & Customer Relationship Management Integrated Solutions, which are applicable to a wide range of different service organizations. SMART Service Desk of software solutions can be adapted very quickly, easily and economically to suit the customer's systems and business processes. Many our customers have got head start in process definition, to Fast-track your ITIL V3, ISO 9001, ISO 20000 & Other ISO Standardization, initiatives to enhance quality of services and customer satisfaction.

SMART Service Desk will help you to improve service quality and resource utilization across your entire IT infrastructure. With SMART Mobile Custom Applications can access applications from SMART Phones for faster and better-informed business decisions.

Our SaaS solutions on Cloud let you seamlessly manage services, customers and quality improvement programs. Available through any Web browser, our solutions are designed to help you shorten deployment times, reduce risks and lower costs, including support and maintenance expenses.

SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is a great start to creating your very own customer service legends. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com

http://smartservicedesk.com

What You Don't Know About Feedback

First, not all feedback is created equal. Feedback comes in several different flavors. Feedback is both internal and external.

There are actions and inactions that could be sabotaging your business success? What if there are few key things you’re missing that could help you get even better results? There’s only one way to find out, and that’s by getting feedback, the correct feedback.

Poorly conducted performance reviews and customer questionnaires, harsh criticisms by thoughtless colleagues or customers, and bad experiences with feedback systems all contribute to the temptation to steer clear of feedback if at all possible.

You may worry that all the feedback will be negative. Many people avoid asking others what they think about their products and services because all feedback will be about negative experiences only. It all depends on how and what you ask about.

The question “What do you like best about your job or shopping experience?” will tend to get positive responses. “Tell us what we can do to improve your…?” should get a variety of honest answers. “Tell us what we did wrong during your most recent shopping experience?” This question will tend to receive negative responses, because that is what you asked about.

You don’t know whom to ask. The person who can offer the most effective feedback on your business may vary depending on when you need the feedback and what kind of feedback you need. You could include a satisfaction survey to every shopper or provide an online method to gather random feedback.

Believe it or not, you can learn to be your own best reviewer, particularly if you practice listening critically. First, think about problems that you know you have had in the past and ask employees how to handle it "when" it arises again.

Whether you like it or not, customers are continuously publishing feedback on your products and services on the Internet and via social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. What your customers take time to say is incredibly valuable. Positive feedback boosts your business and criticism can help you to improve your offerings.

Social networking is becoming the norm. Buyers expect a much more interactive experience, and they are less and less impressed with marketing copy. It’s an accepted truth that listening to customers is critical, but previously it was still possible to run a company while ignoring this virtue.

SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is a great start to creating your very own customer service legends. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

The New Facts About Feedback

Delivering great feedback is inexpensive, easy to learn, and there’s no shortage of expert advice out there on how to do it well. Nearly 3/4 of employees want more feedback than they are currently getting. So it’s clear that there’s still a lot of room for improvement.

Before any feedback will be effective, the recipient must see the source as credible for developmental advice. Critically, the person you’re giving feedback to must believe you have their interests at heart. If not, your feedback won’t be effective in driving behavioral change, no matter how well intentioned.

More often, it’s not that employees aren’t aware of the issue, it’s that they don’t know how to respond. So just pointing out that they have a problem isn’t enough to be helpful. To improve performance, constructive feedback must go one step further and provide specific feedback around potential causes and solutions.

From the Harvard Business Review, most employees prefer corrective feedback to praise and recognition. A majority of employees prefer corrective feedback to praise and recognition. In this survey of 900 global employees, 57% of respondents stated that they prefer corrective, negative or constructive feedback, while only 43% stated that they prefer praise or recognition.

Though older workers have a preference for both more positive and negative feedback than younger generations. While this is interesting and provides a strong counterpoint to the millennial feedback myth, it’s worth noting that the research didn’t control for rank or role, so some of this effect is likely to be explained by seniority.

A recent study by the London Business School shows that outstanding performers need more positive affirmation after setbacks. The researchers looked at the performance of top talent after they’ve had a major setback that involves loss of status. The findings show that when previously high performers lose status, their performance suffers. And the very best performers suffer the most. The mediocre performers, by contrast, barely suffer at all.

The research also shows that it was possible to mitigate the effects of this performance drop with targeted affirmation. The academics suggest that this reinforces just how important it is to give your star a break after they’ve bungled something or lost face. As their manager, you have a critical role here in helping your top talent regain their status by letting them know how much you value their work.

SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is a great start to creating your very own customer service legends. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

The Difference – Feedback and Feed-forward

Before we compare and contrast these too concepts let’s look at the definitions.

Feedback:
Information about reactions to a product, a person's performance of a task, etc., used as a basis for improvement.

Feed-forward:
The modification or control of a process using its anticipated results or effects.

The easy way to understand the difference between conventional feedback and feed-forward is to think in terms of the past and the future. Conventional feedback is past focused. It provides information about past activity and performance. Feed-forward on the other hand is future focused. It works around information about what a person could do differently in future interactions with your products or services. These suggestions for improvement enable people to make on-going adjustments in how they are executing their job performance.

To properly benefit from feed-forward you must first have and understand accurate feedback from your customers or staff.

The fundamental problem with all types of feedback: it focuses on the past, on what has already occurred, not on the infinite variety of opportunities that can happen in the future. As such, feedback can be limited and static, as opposed to expansive and dynamic.

Feed-forward is often thought of as guessing what people will do in a future interaction. Feed-forward means using suggestions for the future that might help them achieve a positive change in their selected behavior. If participants have worked together in the past, they are not allowed to give any feedback or actions from the past.

The baseline for feed-forward success is getting your desired results. So you may want to test in small groups before applying the tested technique in wide scale applications.

The solutions you create may become an integral part of how your customers feed, clothe and purchase in the near and long term. At one end of the continuum is a clear distinction between providing instruction and providing feedback. However, when feedback is combined with more a correctional review, the feedback and instruction become intertwined until the process itself takes on the forms of new instruction, rather than informing the user solely about correctness.

SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is a great start to creating your very own customer service legends. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

How Important Is Your Customer Feedback?

How important is your customer feedback? Do you listen to their voice inside your business? Different types of businesses get different types of feedback. In some cases it can be in your face feedback.  In the very worst case it is just the loss of business that shows the dissatisfaction your customers are feeling.  That is the worst and most destructive type of feedback.

Customer feedback is so important because it provides marketers and business owners with insight that they can use to improve their business, products and/or overall customer experience.

Responding to your customer's feedback is the only way to guarantee you market a product or service that they actually want to buy. Customer feedback is commonly used throughout the product development process to ensure that the end product is something that solves a customer’s problem or fulfils a need.

The most innovative companies in the world are the best at creating products that meet their customers’ needs and exceed their expectations. Think of Apple, Virgin and Dell.

In today’s competitive business world, these companies who can intertwine product development and customer feedback will be the ones that reap strong competitive advantages, have sticky customer loyalty and earn raving customer advocates.

Customer feedback is paramount when determining a customer's needs and wants, particularly when a business introduces new products or services. Companies conduct focus groups, in-person research or customer phone surveys to determine the product features, flavors or styles that consumers want. Customer feedback helps companies determine what's important to their customers.

Customer feedback also is important in detecting certain technological trends among consumers. For example, a new competitor in the market may introduce new and improved technology that potentially threatens the older technology a company sells. If customers indicate they would prefer and buy this technology, the company will need to consider switching to the new technology.

Ultimately, this will lead to better business, better sales, and a better customer experience.” With customer feedback, businesses can make appropriate changes to their offerings to ensure that the product meets the needs and expectations of their customers. Such changes are likely to increase customer satisfaction that, in turn, is sure to improve the profitability levels of any business.

Customers are the most important stakeholders of every business. That’s why it is important to hear their feedback. But collecting customer feedback is just the first step to ensuring a successful customer experience. It’s what you do with the feedback that truly matters.

SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is a great start to creating your very own customer service legends. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

Which CRM Software Meets Your Needs?

As the Internet of Things grows in its power and complexity which software will help your business stay connected?

There is no question that there are many choices of customer service software for you to choose from. But, like all categories of products they all aren’t created equally. One thing is for sure they have many different price points.

Another area that you have to consider is how much it costs to implement the solution. There are two other related factors.  How long it takes to implement the different products and how long it takes to train your staff (or new staff) to be able to successfully use the product.

There is a solution that is both robust and easy to implement and use. SMART Service Desk is that solution. It is scalable in cost so that no company is too small to benefit from our solutions.

Increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. Our SMART Service Desk solutions can be adapted very quickly, easily and economically to meet your exact business needs. Achieve faster implementation, successful change management, and lower total cost of ownership with our 100% configurable, intuitive and affordable solutions.

Here is what one of our customers said about SMART Service Desk; "We needed a tool with automated workflow and easy to use interface. SMART Service Desk’s built-in workflow has made big improvements in our Service Operations - especially having online approval."

Your company can benefit from improved customer satisfaction and life time value from initial contact to post-sales support. SMART Service Desk provides a detailed 360 degree view of your customer interactions. You can improve customer service and delivery operations, maximize revenue opportunities and delight your customers with our affordable and mobile solution.

SMART Customer relationship management (CRM) software, offered both on-premise and cloud-based CRM, help businesses reduce costs and increase profitability by organizing and automating business processes to ensure customer satisfaction and loyalty in the sales, marketing, and customer service fields.

Through SMART CRM solutions we deliver outstanding ROI through automation in customer service, and sales force automation. We also offer mobile apps that allow you to manage your customer relationships on your mobile devices, and software integration adaptors that integrate data and reporting from social media directly into your CRM application.

With our solutions your business can foster employee engagement, retention and productivity. Your satisfied employees can help create more satisfied customers and Improve processes, products, and services, and ultimately your organizational profitability.

SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is a great start to creating your very own customer service legends. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

Wi-Fi Basis Of The Internet Of Things In Your Business?

If your business is some sort of food establishment and you want to make sure you have a happy clientele you really must have Wi-Fi. Yes, I know some say that you lose turnover as people tend to eat slower and stay longer when you have Wi-Fi. How often are you at 100% capacity and need to turn away customers?

When we think of all the services the Internet of Things offers your customers giving them access to their home via Wi-Fi is an appropriate thank you for their choice of eating with you.

Having Wi-Fi in other types of businesses isn’t quite as common, but it should be, and for much the same reason(s). My local grocery store provides me Internet access and uses their portal to push specials to me. My frequent shoppers card gives them a vast data file about me and my shopping habits and it will only be a short time for them to put two and two together and know when I am in the store so they can offer me even more reasons to spend even more money before I leave.

My local electronics store has a program where as a member I get access to specials that aren’t part of their regular advertising flyers. How soon will they find a way to track my entry into their brick and mortar store just like they do when I use their website?

Most loyalty programs are now tied to the use of credit cards at the time of check-out.  The Internet of Things (IoT) will allow these programs to become more interactive based on many new ways of looking at and interacting with specific individual consumers.

We expect Wi-Fi as we travel (and power too). Will your travel be tied to the IoT? You bet it will. As you pass through airports, use rental cars or even where you stay and the entertainment you visit. Movie rentals are way down in hotels and motels as the travelers use all sorts of streaming services they already subscribe to. Some hotels have even gone so far as to actively block the wireless access to the national cell service carriers. Something the hotels got their hands slapped for.

Finish your conference handouts on the plane? Need to send them to the printer or even the hotel’s business center so they will be ready when you land? With the right connections this is easy to do. 

Would you like to know the location and needs of your customers perhaps even before they are considering their next move? It’s all about the data, the knowledge that the IoT opens up for your business.

SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is a great start to creating your very own customer service legends. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com