Howard A. Tullman (CEO
of Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy) purports a strategy he labeled as
"knocking on old doors". He believes an organization can improve
customer satisfaction and retention by focusing on existing clientele.
Companies often spend a lot of money and energy to understand why customers
have left them. Tullman believes in "closing the backdoor". Through
this process, an organization gives utmost attention to current customers and
let go those who turned their back on them. After all, defected customers only account for only a few percentage points of total
revenue. He advised companies to anticipate, meet and exceed customers' needs
and expectations. Support chat software, a web-based
tool, is in line with his beliefs.
Proactively engaging with remaining customers
is more profitable to organizations than chasing the few who left. By
intercepting customers at the right time, happy customers will respond by
increasing the base profit, increased purchasing, reducing operational costs,
paying a price premium on selected items, and giving more referrals. In order
to increase satisfaction and retention, organizations should identify their
customers' position on the cycle of consumption. The cycle of consumption has
three components: purchase, ownership, and repurchase. Tullman believes all
customers go through this cycle. By learning at what stage a customer is at,
you can then discover when and how to offer them something which will fulfill
their needs.
An online retailer can learn how to preempt a customer
at the right time by integrating support chat software. This is an online CRM
that e-commerce websites across a range of industries have integrated. Live support software generally works by connecting company
chat representatives to browsers in real-time. Chat operators provide sales,
after-sales support and customer service.
They make use of the tracking element which helps them to identify where a customer
is upon the cycle of consumption. By monitoring the referral URL, duration upon
a web page and keyword searches, an operator can anticipate what a customer is
interested in. Through measuring these online activities, an operator can
proactively engage customers by referring the product which will fulfill their
need.
Tullman believes other
ways to make customers happy is to give them great service, listen carefully,
and give continual customer maintenance. Live support software is a one-stop
solution and accomplishes organizational goals such as customer satisfaction
and retention. This web-based solution fulfills all components of his strategy.
Operators use the engagement opportunity to discuss with customers all of their website
and product concerns. They are thoroughly trained to resolve all problems in
real-time. They also fulfill customer maintenance by asking for live feed-back.
All of these efforts help an online organization convert their existing
customers into satisfied and profitable ones.
