How Lack of Online Customer Communications Can Kill your Business

Posted on July 03, 2019 by Christine Hourd, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

You may have the best quality product or top notch service, but if you don’t pay attention to client inquiries or comments you’ll kill your business. Understanding how and where your client communicates with you is important in growing your business through word of mouth. And word of mouth can go either way if you don’t have a system in place for customer communication.

The Disappointing Inquiry
I was on Amazon looking at ceiling tiles for my kitchen and one of the options was directly shipped from the supplier. Unfortunately, the information didn’t reveal how many tiles were in a case. This I needed to know so that I could order the right amount.

There was an option to contact the supplier and ask questions. I thought this was very convenient to just click on the link and email the supplier my question. What I was hoping for was a response within a day or two. What I got was no response at all. After three days and continuous searching for other companies that offered a similar product, I bought from another supplier. I never received an answer from that company.

The hose on my vacuum cleaner broke and I searched online for a service repair company that was close by. I found one with good ratings and sent them an email to find out if they could repair my vacuum and how long it would take. I waited a week for them to get back to me, and no reply. I ended up contacting the manufacturer and they were able to send me the part and shared a video online of how to replace it. Never heard from that service repair company.

As business owners we are signing up for various ways of attracting more customers. Our product or service is listed on partnering sites, like Amazon, or on our own website, as in the examples above. We may also have the info in print or on various social media sites. Although, with our busy schedules we tend to forget where we have our information out there, and haven’t clarified the means to contact us.

I’ve been blogging for a number of years, and at one time I changed to a new platform for my website. One day I went on the site to write a new blog and noticed that there was a comment to one of my blogs posted two weeks before. Right away I panicked. I didn’t remember seeing any notification for the comment. As I looked into it further, I found that the notification wasn’t switched from the marketing company email to my email after my site was built.

Another time I noticed a message on my Facebook messenger account from someone I wasn’t connected to. These messages get sorted into another area. When I found it the message was already a month old.

How to set up a System and keep Business Rolling in
We lose business all the time from not being on top of communications. There are many opportunities to connect with interested and potential clients. Unfortunately, without a system in place we let that business slip away and hand it over to someone else.

How to improve your customer communications before it kills your business? Here’s some actions you must take to capture this precious business:

Search your business name in the browser on your computer and see where you come up. Checking on a consistent basis and may show you reviews and shout outs from happy customers. This is a great opportunity to show the public and your client appreciation and that you value customer input. On the opposite side, it will also show customer dissatisfaction. Make sure this is responded to right away, and with the intention of appreciating their feedback that will improve your business.

The email used for clients to contact you when visiting your website needs to be active and monitored. If you have a general email that starts with “info” or “hello” make sure that it gets set up on someone’s account who can answer questions and actively checks their email. As with the vacuum service company, I’m sure if they received the email they would have responded.

Social media is a great way to connect with potential clients, current clients and to show off your business and its personality. But when posts on your Facebook page go unanswered or nobody “likes” the comment, then your business begins to look unattractive. People will think that you’re there for attention rather than to connect. Social media is meant to be social, so interaction is a must. If you’re going to be on there choose to understand it.

Keep track of where you find your business online and create a schedule to check it daily or every second day. You don’t want that opportunity for more business to go to someone else.