The Best Business Tip Ever?

…the best business tip ever…for the the millionth time and I know you have too.  In fact, we tell it to our own clients every single day.  Curious?  Here goes, “Listen to your customers.” This nugget of business wisdom should not be shocking.   In our opinion, this is easily the best business tip (of course, in our opinion, signing up for Bizzflo is a close).

Either way, we can all agree that listening to your customers is one of the least automated business tips out there.  I can prove it.  Open up any recent marketing material you have sent to a customer.  If you are following this advice you can undoubtedly demonstrate two things very quickly in everything you do:

1. Where you are asking them to give feedback.
2. Where are you demonstrating you listened.

If you can look at your marketing material and see this in action.  Then stop reading.  You are ahead of the curve.  This article is going to talk about this and the strategies to put it into action in depth and you obviously do not need that advice.   If you are still reading then you may be curious why, as a company that focuses on automation, are we focusing on listening to our customers.  Obviously they want automation right?  Well, in today’s business environment automation is a need.  Our customers want something more.  Like every other business it is critical for our success to find out what by listening.   This is why this business tip is the best.  It works for every business.  Let me demonstrate:

One of our long time customers asked us to help grow their business.  This is not an uncommon request.  In fact, it happens so much we have a recommendation you may be familiar with, “Show us what your customers are saying”.  This is where the conversation changed, because while they could “tell us” what customers wanted, they could not “show us” where customers said it.

It’s a subtle difference, but as a data scientist this is a red flag.   Experience has made me a believe that non-recorded data is non-existent date.  This is simple to solve.  Business automation even plays a critical role in simplifying the strategy of listening to customers.  It was this strategy that helped our customer grow their business.  It is a simple process to follow, even if you are not taking advantage of the Networking Event Offer, simply follow these steps and put the old adage of  “listening to your customers” to work for you: 

1. MAKE IT EASY FOR CUSTOMER’S TO SHARE:
   • Create accounts for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube
   • Ask customers to share their thoughts, i.e. “Please click the links above and let us know what you thought of our article.”
2. CAPTURE CUSTOMER COMMENTS:
   • Create a central location to store all your customer comments
   •  Bizzflo handles this automatically, but with some manual effort google docs, ms word, excel, and excel could also work.
3. GROUP LIKE COMMENTS TOGETHER:
   • Create groups for all the comments that share a common theme
   • Utilizing a single word, or tag, is how the Bizzflo system automates this process and it is how we encourage others to do it.
4. PICK ONE THEME TO ADDRESS:
   • Create one strategy to invest your energy and resources into that fits your chosen them
   • Projects, big and small, require more effort than you plan on.  Don’t spread yourself to thin.
5. EXECUTE ONE STEP AT A TIME:
   • Creating tasks that accomplish your strategy step-by-step
   • This can be automated through your calendar, as in Bizzflo, .
6. TELL EVERYONE:
   • Create messages for each of the accounts from step 1 to share everything from step 4 and what you have from step 5.
7. ASK FOR MORE COMMENTS:
   • Ask for more comments about your solution and then repeat steps 1-7 until you move to another theme.

We would love to hear how these tips impacted your business.  Leave a comment below, or connect with us on social media, to let us know.