The world is facing one of the worst global economic recessions that it has ever seen. Thousands of people have been rendered jobless and many small businesses are closing down each year. The larger companies with deep pockets who are expected to ride out the worst of the situation are also increasing layoffs of their employees regularly to become more cost effective. Even though there has been some improvement in the global situation, it is yet to filter down to the local level.
In such a situation as the owner of a small business you may well have your back to the wall. The idea of being an entrepreneur may have seemed a good one a few years ago, but today you might be holding your head in your hands and wondering, just what you have got yourself into. If you have made it so far, don't lose hope. You are obviously doing something right. Your business is offering a service or product of some value for your customers to have kept you in business all through the recession.
Keeping a business alive is all about managing your customers well. This is done by constantly communicating with your customers in a sensible manner. Since you are unlikely to have a large staff to do the needful it would make sense to leverage the few resources that you do have. One good way to get in touch with customers regularly would be to use web based contact management software. This would be a cost effective web contact management system for your business.
It could also be integrated with sales contact management software and you would be able to keep your existing customers well informed about any promotions or discounts that you may be offering. You could even cross sell or make repeat sales to the customers that you already have besides developing new ones. It would also make it easier for them to get in touch with you as and when they need to. Plus it would be cheaper to do all the correspondence online rather than operate many telephone lines.
You will have to ensure that you respond in a timely and efficient manner to any queries that you get asked online. That will go a long way in developing the brand and ensuring that the customer always has a positive experience with the company. One satisfied customer can lead to the best word of mouth publicity ever. This is the kind of publicity which incorporates a measure of trust for the brand or the business which an advertising campaign can never generate.
People trust people they know and if your customers go around telling their friends and family about the great job that your company manages to do, it will have a booming effect on your business. It also generates new customers at a far lower cost of acquiring the customer. Riding out the current global economic crisis is all about surviving in a highly competitive business environment. And you need the customers to do that.