Virtual Earner

Do you remember a while back, I wrote an article about one of my businesses that was not doing well? I felt that it was because I had not been paying adequate attention to the business. I called the article “Innovate or die,” and that title was really fitting, because due to my lack of innovation in the business, it really was dieing.

In the article, though, I committed that I was going to put more concentration in that business to try to bring it back to life again. I mean, it was not dead (yet), but it was headed that way. My sales were down to only about 1/3 of what they had been in their hayday, and they were progressing downward.

What action did I take? My first thing was that I made some small, subtle changes in the website to kind of update it a bit. I also instituted a weekly sale. On the home page of the site, right up front and center is a listing of the items that are on sale that week. Why is something like this important? Well, it shows that somebody is home. The site is not just on autopilot. Somebody is behind the scenes making changes and there to assist people. When I put up a sale, I put what dates the sale is good for, something like “Prices good through June 15, 2008.” Why? Because it shows that it’s current, not something that I threw up there 3 years ago, and the site is long since dead. That gives people confidence.

Have I seen results? You better believe it! It’s been only (less than) two months since I published that article. You know what? I have seen sales increases of up to 100% per week compared to what I was seeing two months ago! That means that I am still down about 30% from where I was a couple years ago when the business was at it’s peak. However, traditionally, this is the slow time of year for the business in question. Mid-May through the beginning of September has always been the low time for that business. So, I am feeling that if I continue to nurture the business, keep my hand in play there, and build customer relationships, coming up in September and beyond, I could well expect to see the business recover completely.

It’s a good feeling to restore something that you have allowed to wither. It’s also a good lesson not to let it happen again. We get lessons in life every single day. Do you listen when the messages come? It’s really important to keep your ear tuned in for such messages!

I have been involved in various businesses and jobs since I was 12 years old.  These days, not many kids start working at such a young age.  They should, though.  I know, I know, I’ll be accused of forcing kids into labor and such, but what I am saying is that kids can learn a lot by getting into doing jobs, work, business and such at a young age.

One of the things that I learned from my first mentor was that Customer Service is the most important thing about any business.  Actually, I’ll expand it and say that Customer Service is the most important aspect of any part of your life.

Now, in some parts of your life, you may have to look at the word “customer” a little differently.

Marriage?  Your spouse is your customer.  Treat your customer right, and you’ll have a customer for life.

Friendship?  Your friends are your customers.

It applies to any kind of relationship.  However, this blog is about business, so let’s focus on that.

I contend that the very best way to keep a customer for life is through making mistakes.  What?  That doesn’t make sense, right?  Well, first, let’s all agree that everybody makes mistakes.  No matter how hard you try, how much you concentrate, you will make a mistake sooner or later.  It is how you deal with that mistake that will decide if you just lost a customer, or strengthened your relationship with that customer.

I have had incidents where I, or one of my employees has made a very serious mistake and a customer told me that we had lost his business for life.  He would never shop with us again.  Well, the gut reaction is to get mad, tell the person off, and say goodbye!  Forget him, right?  That’s not the way I do it.

First of all, consider that the reason that the customer is mad is because YOU made the mistake to begin with.  If you handle the situation right, you will not only keep the customer, you will also have a stronger relationship with him when he sees that you take care of mistakes.  Go out of your way to not only correct the mistake, but go above and beyond what the customer would expect!

Just as an example, I have a business where I sell flowers.  Roses and such.  Generally, we deliver these flowers to a man’s girlfriend in most cases.  If we make a mistake, the guy usually gets quite angry, because not only have we not done what he wanted, in many cases we might have even made him look bad to his girl.  That’s like playing with fire.  For example, let’s say that we delivered flowers that were not fresh, already wilted.  The lady tells the guy that the flowers were not so nice, then he gets angry at us, and says we can kiss his business goodbye.  We go out of our way, and we then delivery maybe 3 times the amount of FRESH flowers to the lady as our way of saying “we are sorry” to the customer.  Not only that, we tell the girl that it was her boyfriend who sent the additional flowers.  This not only corrects the problem, it makes the man look good!  You can bet, 9 times out of 10, the guy is so happy that he forgets all about his threat to start shopping elsewhere, and becomes even a better customer in the future.

Customer service is all about how you handle mistakes, which are inevitable.  Treat your customers good, step up to the plate and fix the problem when you made a mistake, and you will go far in business.  If you don’t do these things, your business may not survive long.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about Wordpress, and the fact that there were just way too many updates, plug-ins that needed updates, etc.  Honestly, I have been doing some searching, looking for the right client to move to.  There are literally dozens of blogging and CMS (Content Management System) clients out there to choose from.  Some of them are pretty good, others are not so good.  No piece of software is perfect, no doubt about that.

I do want to leave Wordpress and move on to something that is more stable, in terms of not having to do constant upgrades.  For a person who has one blog, or a couple, it’s probably not a big deal to do an upgrade a few times per month, as is often the case with Wordpress.  However, I have dozens of blogs, and those upgrades can be quite a time waster.  If there is a problem with an upgrade causing a site crash, you can throw away a full day or more.  Throw in the fact that plug-ins need constant upgrades too, and you’ve got a full time job there!

There is a problem, though, with leaving Wordpress.  Switching to a different platform means problems.  First, you have to migrate everything from your Wordpress installation to the new client.  This is not always an easy or seamless thing to do.  Sometimes it can’t even be done.  For example, I have one blog that has nearly 10,000 comments on it.  Moving comments is not easy all the time.  Almost all of my Wordpress sites have custom themes that I have either built myself or paid to have done.  Those themes won’t work with other software, they will have to be abandoned, or ported over to the new platform.  That won’t be easy, it will take time, or money, or both.

Thinking about this whole thing gets some ideas flowing in my head.  Is it healthy for so many people to be tied in to a single platform?  I am talking about the health of the Web here.  I mean, if you build up a site with thousands of posts, lots of content and such, you are kind of locked in, as I have pointed out above.

With all of this thinking, I have come to only one conclusion so far… Leaving Wordpress isn’t easy!  As with other aspects of life, I guess… breaking up is hard to do!