One of the most popular ways to generate leads for your online business is by hiring a service that will redirect those leads for you. Now, let us compare hiring a service to generate leads for you – for the increase of productivity of your business, as to getting them yourself.

Having a service generate and redirect leads for you doesn’t only make things fast and easy but it’s also a great way to get a specific number of leads for a certain price. More often than not, when you try getting your own leads, you get more than you’d want or far less than you actually need. If you get only a few leads, this means that you have to do the whole process over, and when you get a huge number, people might think they have been cheated on. Hiring a service to generate leads not only cuts down cost, time and effort, but the service will see to it that you get exactly what you want for the price you have agreed upon.

These leads can be given a number of specifications. For example, you might ask the service to only redirect leads that are generated in a specific country, or several different ones. These leads usually come with various types of data already filled in, such as survey questions like addresses, phone numbers, and names. The leads generated by this kind of service are hot. This means that if you act fast enough, you may still find that lead on your site. Having leads redirected to you is a quick, affordable way to increase your online business’s effectiveness and will give you more opportunities.

Think of having someone redirect leads to you as a “pay per result” type of advertising. This is an advantage for you because they will only charge you for the leads you get whereas trying to get them yourself without the guarantee of getting anything even if you pay. Having a lead generation company do the work for you offers all of the aforementioned advantages, as well as being able to guarantee a certain number of leads so that you are not shorted or let down.

 

Nathan Holland is the owner of BSP Advertising. BSP generates High Quality MLM Leads You can learn more about their services by visiting http://www.bizsourceplus.com

It is fairly easy and even free for a webmaster to use tools to analyse their website traffic, monitor the number of visitors, report of the web pages that have been accessed and the length of time each visitor spends accessing the website.

However, despite the vast amount of detailed information that can be collected what will always be missing is information that will tell the webmaster what the visitor was thinking. Did they dislike the site? Was the layout clear or confusing? Was navigating the website easy and did they find the information they wanted?

A website may be generating sales but why are some people that visit the website not buying anything? Was the reason because they didn’t like what was being offered, or was it that they couldn’t find what they wanted even though it was there?

Using online surveys webmasters have a simple and accurate method of answering these types of questions. Direct feedback from the website visitors hears it straight from the horse’s mouth, no need to guess, just ask the visitors directly on how they found the web site and if they found what they were looking for.

With an online survey webmasters can find out:-

• How often do people visit the website?
• How did they arrive at the website?
• Is it for business or pleasure that they are interested in the website?
• Were they able to find the information they were looking for?
• How easy did they find navigating the website?
• Would they be willing to recommend the website to others?

A good website survey will be brief and will gather information that once analysed will provide valuable information to help improve the website.

An alternative to a traditional survey would be to embed one or two survey questions within the website after specific procedures. One example would be to ask visitors at the end of the registration process if they found the procedure quick and easy; another example would be after ordering an item the customer could be asked if they found the ordering procedure and payment methods to their liking. So that the questions don’t become a nuisance to regular visitors the website can be configured so that the questions are only asked once for every registered user.

Website surveys take the mystery out of working out what visitors think of a website and using Online Survey Software they are quick and easy to design and once implemented will really become the webmaster’s assistant.

To see a sample website survey please follow the link: Sample Website Survey

Why bother?

Good customer service is the life blood of any business. Although you should try and attract new customers good customer service will help generate customer loyalty and encourage repeat business. With each satisfied customer your business is likely to win many more customers through recommendations and remember, if you are not taking care of your customers, your competition will.

A Customer Satisfaction survey will help you not only identify problem areas but will also demonstrate to your customers that you care and are proactive in looking for ways to improve the service that you provide.

 

Where do you start?

Objective – Before you start creating your survey clarify the objectives of the survey, in that way you will find it easier to decide what are the right questions to ask.

Analysis – In addition to the objectives consider how you will analyse the answers having completed the survey.

Keep in mind that ‘closed’ questions (where a respondent is asked to choose from a limited number of responses) are much easier to analyze than ‘open’ questions (where the respondent can reply in anyway they want).

A lot will depend on the predicted volume of respondents, the higher the volume the more important it is to have an easy method of analysing the results.

Opportunity – Keep in mind that as well as obtaining valuable market research data customer surveys are also a good way to publicise aspects of your service that your customers may not be aware of.

Before you publish the survey confirm that the questions you have asked will provide you with market research data that when analysed will help you make informed decisions.

Next, read through the survey from a marketing view point, check that you have phrased each question so that every opportunity has been taken to promote your business?

The ideal question will perform the following three functions:-

• Market research – provide valuable feedback to help you improve your customer satisfaction levels and in turn your business
• Marketing – promote aspects of your business
• Information/Education – advertise a service that you provide that your customers may not have been unaware of

For example:- Do you find the in-store baby changing facilities useful?

By asking this question not only will the store receive good market research feedback on the facility they provide but they will also promote their facilities and advertise themselves as a family friendly store, even beyond those customers who have a specific need for the baby changing facility that has been provided.

Warts and all – to benefit most from a customer survey you need to avoid the temptation, in any way, of attempting to sugar coat the survey.

A customer satisfaction survey should be designed to highlight problems so that they can be addressed; regular customer satisfaction will prevent complacency and will also give early warning on where your competitors initiatives may be losing you business.

 

What questions should you ask?

Although each business is likely to have specific and unique factors that are important in providing good customer services there are common areas that are relevant to all businesses be they a physical store, online internet store or a service industry. The following are some key areas to providing good customer service.

Communication – Do you do anything to help your customers communicate with you?

When a customer telephones is the phone answered promptly; are enquiries about products or services properly handled? Good businesses will make every effort to ensure that whatever the customers query it is resolved by the right person, politely, quickly and fairly.

If a problem is not resolvable immediately do you promise to respond in a given time period and do you deliver on your promise?

Use a customer satisfaction survey to ensure that all your staff are considered by your customers to be helpful, courteous and knowledgeable.

Location – Are you doing everything you can to ensure that your customers find it easy to visit you, if a physical store, does it have good access and is it conveniently located?

Making it pleasant, making it easy – For a virtual business it is important to ensure that your website is easy to use and aesthetically pleasing.

Physical store or online website, is the store properly laid out, can your customers find what they need and is there sufficient information and help on hand to explain how a particular product works?

The right quality products – In addition to measuring the quality of the service that you provide you should ensure that the products and services that you provide do in fact match your customers’ requirements.

Value for money – Cheap or expensive is hardly ever a good measure, value for money is.

Do your current customers consider your services as value for money, if not, why not?

Speed and attention – Customers want to be dealt with quickly but attentively.

Are you doing everything you can to avoid any delay?

Good businesses will try to treat each customer as an individual, does yours? Attention is one thing but only if it leads to a quick and satisfactory resolution to the query.

Demographics and Specific issues – Take the opportunity to profile your customers, for example their gender, age group and where they live?

The more you try to understand your customers the better you will be able to target your business.

Within the survey allow customers to highlight specific problems and provide contact details.

 

What next?

Once the survey has been completed analyse the results.

Trends – Look for common and specific areas where the customer service is found wanting.

Ask yourself if any criticism is valid and is there anything that can be done to resolve or minimise the problem?

Training – Are all employees properly trained and do they have sufficient knowledge?

Where staff training programmes have been implemented have they had a positive impact on the business?

Follow-up – If a customer who has completed a survey has raised a specific issue do all you can to ensure that their complaint is addressed.

Don’t waste an opportunity to resolve a problem and keep a customer.

Continuously Monitor – Make changes based on the survey results and then re-measure by issuing further surveys.

To view a sample customer satisfaction survey for a store that demonstrates some of the above advice please visit:- Sample Customer Survey