For all businesses, whatever the industry, it’s important to periodically look for ways to make improvements: whether that’s improvements to product and service offerings, to customer satisfaction levels or employee retention rates. Given the current economic climate, some industries, such as tourism and high-street stores, are struggling while other industries are managing to weather the storm. But whatever industry you are in, you can still aim to improve your business. Here are a few expert tips for doing just that:
Improve customer experience
There is only one place to begin, and this is by improving the experience you provide to your customers. Look for one way to enhance the current products or services you provide. This could be anything from offering customers a discount for signing up to your newsletter, a free informational download or simply sending an automated response when you cannot respond to emails straight away.
Encourage employee training
One of the best ways to improve your business is by improving your employees. Encourage them to take a training course to advance their existing skills or even upskill for the coming net-zero changes and the green economy. Economic analysis has shown that there will opportunities for green economy jobs in 11 specific sectors. Green jobs in four sectors are expected to provide 90% of all green jobs. These sectors are:
- Green Finance
- Power
- Homes and Buildings
- Low Carbon Transport
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is known to boost the quality and efficiency of an individual’s work, but it also helps to increase employee retention rates as well. This will result in happier customers or clients, and lower costs for the business by keeping recruitment costs to a minimum
Adapt your approach to marketing
If you remain stagnant in the business world and offer the same products or services that you have always done, then you are going to be left behind by the competition. This is why you need to take the time to adapt your marketing strategy so that it is suitable for current trends and general business environment, which is particularly important in 2021 after the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. For example, more and more customers and clients will be interacting with your business online this year so you may want to review the user experience on your website, and on your telephone and email systems. Do you, for example, use an Interactive Voice Recording (IVR) system that makes customers stay on the line or one that simply makes them put the phone down, resulting in lost business or dissatisfied customers?
Learn from your mistakes
Your business will be held back if you do not learn from the mistakes you have made. Whenever something goes wrong, you shouldn’t punish yourself or try to blame someone else or ignore the problem. Instead learn a lesson from what has happened and use that information to avoid problems in the future. You should see every failure as an opportunity. there are many powerful lessons you can learn from failures and many of those lessons learned come from successful business leaders.
Set up a referral program
Your existing customer base is your most powerful marketing tool. Many business owners make the mistake of only concentrating on securing new customers, rather than their existing clients. It’s important to build up loyal relationships, and this can include setting up a referral program whereby you give current customers an incentive for bringing new custom to you. It’s one of the easiest and most effective ways of drumming up new business and can be particularly effective where a business offers both products and experiences like live face-to-face events. Customers may be less likely to recommend the products but when they have had a great experience at a live event they are more likely to communicate that informally to friends and family – the perfect referral.
Improve your collaboration efforts
Effective collaboration and communication are imperative for a business to be successful . Make sure you have all of the right tools in place so that your team can collaborate efficiently and achieve more. We’ve all learnt to spend more time in remote meetings so don’t let lack of technology, or lack of training in the technology, hold your business back.