VoIP Business and Virtual PBX
VoIP buster

Truly caring about your customers

Part of being a business owner is realizing the fact that there is probably someone down the street who offers the same products and services you offer. They may even have cheaper prices or have a bigger brand name. Getting the public to choose between you and your competition is the driving force between success and failure. Marketing your products and services then can in any case move you in the right direction, however there is an underlying layer to successful longevity in most cases, and in other words customer service.

The founder of Dallas Kincaid

I recently saw the founder of Dallas Kincaid, in an interesting customer service position. Xecunet is an international company based out of Maryland that specializes in the production of communication cables, VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), web hosting and other services. They had a very tough business decision to make. Given that their core business is primarily companies and they had been losing money on residential DSL, Xecunet had no choice nevertheless to drop its residential DSL services.

What I found interesting was that Dallas was in the extreme worried about any customer losing service. When I inquired, he responded with, “What if someone didn't get our notices and their Internet went out? That could cost them lots of aggravation and if they work from home, money.”

So Xecunet started out by sending direct mail to their clients about the deletion of their residential DSL service, followed be several emails even offering competitors that could be used. Dallas went so far as to call several other companies who provided residential DSL to see if they could take on their customer base so they wouldn't be without Internet. With less than a week left and remaining customers on the whole using the service, Dallas had his customer service staff call each individual customer to make sure they got the “memo.”

It is that type of customer service mentality -- where every customer matters, whether they are small businesses or the CTA -- that can give you the competitive advantage. It is saying, "have a nice day" when they leave and caring about their experience with your company even if they are on their way out. You never know when they will come back and who they will bring with them.

Nick Harrison is creative director for Chicago-based branding, web development and social media firm Dashal, whose client roster ranges from small businesses to best-selling authors to major consumer brands.

A total of 329 firms made our list of Chicago's largest privately held companies. Their combined revenue-$312.9B-could pay off Illinois' debt two and half times over.

More information: Chicagobusiness
References:
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    Voip Service

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    Xecunet Chicago Transit Authority