Small Business Owners: 8 Practical Business Growth Ideas

Collaborative post – may contain affiliate links

Generating more customers is a crucial business growth strategy. However, it is easier said than done. But that should not always be the case. Here are practical business growth ideas for small business owners.

Know your customers 

The first step is to understand your customers. Know their needs so you can tailor your products and services to meet those specific needs. You have to gain insight into your clients. To make this more manageable, you should personalize your services and ask for feedback. A survey is another perfect way to understand your clients. 

Improve your customer service

The customer experience (CX) is fast becoming a crucial factor when it comes to business growth. You have to ensure your customer service is exceptional to retain your existing customers and attract more. When you offer great customer services, your clients are more likely to refer other people to the business. 

Leverage the power of social media 

Social media has become a very powerful business tool. Increasing your social media presence is a great marketing strategy. Additionally, you can use social media influencers for marketing your brand and promoting your growth. Use this company to build your profile and attract new customers through social media campaigns. 

Create a network 

Networking is one of the best business growth strategies. Invest your time and money into building networks that will help you achieve the desired growth. Nowadays, business is all about who you know instead of what you know. Networking will allow you to build positive relationships with like-minded people in the industry and beyond. You can also use your network to gain more customers and experience. 

Create and host an event 

Creating and hosting an event is a great way to promote your brand and expand your customer base. For instance, you can create an exhibition and invite an industry leader to offer a keynote to your customers. This strategy will encourage more people to interact with your products and services.

Nurture your existing customer base

Do you have strategies to nurture your clients? Start creating lasting relationships with your existing customers to improve the retaining rate. There are many ways of doing this. For instance, you can improve how you stay in touch with your customers. Additionally, you should find new opportunities to increase production to cater to the growing customer base. 

Create brand awareness through CSR

Creating brand awareness is essential if you want to grow your business. Initiate community development projects or sponsor a community tournament or event to raise your business profile. Corporate social responsibility is an excellent business strategy to give back to the community and raise brand awareness. 

Track your progress

With all things said and done, you should evaluate your performance to see what works and what does not work for your business. Monitor your systems and identify areas that need improvement to boost growth. Accordingly, do not be afraid to try out different strategies until you find what is best for business growth. 

Final thoughts 

If you are a small business owner, growth should be in your goals. What you do and how you do it determines the success of your company. Give your business a big presence by going online and using social media influencers, among other tips. 

How To Keep Standards High In The Workplace Every Single Day

Collaborative post – may contain affiliate links

Whatever you do in life, you’ll want to enjoy and feel as though you’re getting the most out of the experience. The chances are that you’ll also want to have high standards and reach all kinds of success. By no means are you guaranteed success and prosperity with every project, but nobody enters these kinds of things hoping to fail! Those at the very top of the pile with regard to professional life reached that pedestal because they put time and effort in while wanting to reach the very pinnacle. 

In terms of your business and the workplace you station yourselves in, you’re going to want to ensure that everything is working properly and that productivity is continually at a good standard. Keeping standards high isn’t for everyone because it requires a certain mentality and way of working. Plenty of people are okay with being mediocre. If you wish to keep standards high in the workplace every single day, then here are a few things you can do: 

Make Sure You Have High Standards Yourself 

It all starts with you – if you’re the owner of the business, of course. The leader sets the tone for everything that follows. Sure, you’ll have people that use their initiative, but every group needs to have a captain at the helm. If you’re keeping your standards high and expecting a lot from yourself, then they’ll likely follow suit. How you behave in terms of positively or negatively can make a big difference, too. If your staff will be walking into a dreary environment, then they’ll likely drop off quicker than you’d like. 

Have A Solid Plan 

As the owner of a business (or any project that wants to succeed, for that matter), you’ll need to have a solid plan that has everything in the right place. If you don’t have a plan, then everything will be solely in your head and the heads of the staff. Written down schedules and plans will help so much as everyone will know what they’re doing going forward. A plan will not only raise standards but will improve the consistency of everyone involved, too.

Ensure Everything Is Ticking Over Nicely 

Here, we’re talking about everything from cleanliness and organization to every piece of equipment. Whether you’re working with an array of digital systems that all need to be running perfectly, or whether you have dab pumps that need to be kept at the right pressure – make sure that they’re all running as they should. The slightest error can lead to much worse issues. Be in touch with all the right professionals that can get out to you as quickly as possible. 

Employ The Right People For The Right Job

In terms of improving customer experiences and overall productivity in the workplace, you’re going to want to make sure you have the right people on board. It’s not just a case of bringing in the correct ones in terms of qualifications and experience, however. Personalities and how they’ll work with other members of staff should come into your thinking, too.

Ways You And Your Staff Can Improve Customer Experiences

Collaborative post – may contain affiliate links

You’ve already got a great team in your corner supporting you but now you’re looking to work with your team to build and optimize your business further. 

A great way to advance your business is by looking at your customer conversion rate optimization. By reviewing this and building on your individual customer experience you will be able to maximize your returns.

Why Is Customer Experience Optimization So Important?

Over recent years brands and organizations have become more aware of the importance of a brand’s and organization’s customer’s experience and the gravity of influence they carry. In some instances, customers have been known to rate customer experience to be more important than price. 

Think over your own experiences, both positive and negatives. How did it influence your decisions and thoughts towards that company? If negative, did you go back, and why not?

As you’ve realized by now, a positive customer experience is crucial to the ongoing success of your business. If you can create a happy customer, you can create a loyal customer, and it is these customers that can build your success the most. They are the ones that will generate the best free marketing you will be able to get. They are the best advocates you can get to promote your products your services. Not only are they supporting you by purchasing your products or services, but they are offering an authentic word-of-mouth promotion on your behalf.  

You’re mostly there. You offer great service or product already. Your employees are an asset. Now you just need to merge them and show this to your customers, so they can walk away from their experience with you, sharing in this positivity, and can start transitioning into loyal customers.

How Can A Good Customer Experience Be Achieved?

Here are easy and achievable ways that you can all work together to start building that loyal customer base.

The first step is to understand what areas require focus. There are many different strategies available to support you with this. The key ones that most companies use are the Net Promoter Score (NPS). Although you may choose to collate your data elsewhere from personal surveys, gaining and reviewing feedback, and looking at conversion reports. Whichever method you choose, it is important that it covers all areas of your business whether this be a website, phone, or in-store, so you 

It is vital that you and your team are all working with the same expectations in relation to how you treat your customers. This also gives your employees an excellent opportunity. The likelihood is that they will deal directly with your customers more than you do. Use this to your advantage. Consider the wealth of knowledge they hold and how can this be used. Completing regular training sessions is a proven way to invest in your employees and up skill their expertise. With this in mind if one employee has proven experience with building rapport with clients and holds a track record of generating loyal customers – let them teach and train others.

How To Connect With Your Customers On A Personal Level

Collaborative post – may contain affiliate links

Connecting with your customers is essential because it can impact just how successful your company has the ability to be if it puts in the extra effort. Each and every customer that you have as a business is valuable, and the more you make into regular and loyal customers, the better. Here are some tips to connect with your customers on a personal level.

Learn More About Them

There’s so much to learn about your customers, but a lot of businesses don’t put in enough time and effort to do the background research. Think about what might be limiting your ability to know more and start looking at analytics of your content and your social media platforms to discover who your audience are and what they’re interested in. Being able to figure out who they are and what they like will help you to create more content, products, and services that directly benefit your target audience, and that ultimately will want to buy it. There is already likely a lot of data that is going un-touched or unseen by yourself as a business, so start paying attention where it’s needed. Ebecs and other software to help collate data is essential.

Focus On What They Enjoy In Terms Of Content

Content can be a very powerful thing for businesses if they get it right. When it comes to your customers, they are the ones that are directly engaging in it, and it’s important that they enjoy the content that you’re churning out and if not, then it’s likely going to stop your business from progressing any further than it is so far. Try to tailor your content more to suit your audience’s needs and wants. You should be able to see from previous engagement, what your customers like to see more of and what probably didn’t appeal to their interests.

Don’t Use A One Size Fits All

A one size fits all approach isn’t going to buy you a better relationship with every customer. Each customer, although similar in the target audience your business receives, is going to have a whole host of differences to another customer. You should be thinking about how you can appeal to each person and make it a more versatile approach. That means treating each engagement and interaction with your customer as something that’s unique, and that’s tailored to suit them. Consider what products they’ve purchased and tailor the emails they receive to suit what they like to buy.

Keep It Personal, Not About The Transaction

Seeing your customers as transactions is going to kill any hopes of having a good relationship with your customers. Keep it personal, from personalized names on email newsletters to addressing them by first name or account on social media. These simple changes that you make in approaching them is going to certainly help.

Connecting with your customers is going to take effort on your side, so use these tips to help you connect with those customers on a more personal level.

Ensure Your Business Name Stands For Quality

Collaborative post – may contain affiliate links

It’s unlikely that the businesses you are most fond of are happy to provide you with less quality at a price point comparable to other businesses within that category. We all know that a business’s primary function is to break even and then grow profit, but that must happen in a manner that is not predatory and impossible for your customers to appreciate.

The best way to curate goodwill, ensure repeat purchases, stand proud in your firm, attract skilled job candidates, network with confidence and enjoy what you do is simply to ensure your business name stands for quality. Of course, this is not as ‘simple’ as it may first seem. There are many complex considerations that go into a business product for it to become a quality item worthy of regard, and in order to achieve that, you have to approximate certain standards and best practices to your aid, going over and above the baseline legislation you need to meet.

But how should those complexities be regarded? In the following advice, we’d love to help you explore that:

Product Quality

The quality that goes into the products you make is essential, and it’s often found in the smaller details of its design and construction. For instance, the optical bonding you use for a fantastic and shielded dashboard display may help your small design gain so much more value over the competition thanks to how tightly it is sealed, how easily it is cleaned, and how aesthetically comforting it looks. Product quality should also be defined within the best of the best safety standards in order to boast a worthwhile and comprehensively marketable product.

Excellent Support

Excellent support offered alongside your product experience can be fantastic. Reliable web chatting services, the ability to call your staff, or (in an increasingly relevant sense) social media directing messaging can be very convenient. Additionally, emails that ask how the customer is getting on after their purchase can be a great idea. 

Support can also come in the form of an excellent FAQ on your website, a place for users to discuss their experience and help one another out, as well as a cared-for willingness to replace or refund customers that may not have had a good experience, on top of doing your best to settle that particular complaint.

The Customer Experience

The customer experience matters, and it must be taken into account as a full spectrum of consideration. For instance, the opening seconds of a new packaged item matter, and will be one of the first impressions of the careful UX design laid forth by your product architects. If you can enhance the customer experience from the moment they enter your store or the ease of which they can browse your website, this is even further improved. Don’t be afraid to keep refining and tweaking your output until your business becomes more than a service – it becomes a lifestyle.

With this advice, you’re sure to make your business name stand for quality, in the healthiest sense.

A Touch Of Class: What Does It Take To Run A Food Business With Finesse?

Collaborative post – may contain affiliate links

There is nothing quite so challenging in the entrepreneurial world than running a food-oriented business. Whether you are trying your hand at a restaurant, being a wholesale supplier, or even driving around with an ice cream van, running a food business isn’t a straightforward as it seems! It’s a fine art of providing customer service, but also knowing that one false move can sully your reputation forever. What does it take to run a food business with the right intentions, but also make it successful?

Keeping The Customer Satisfied

While this is such a diverse subject matter, from the perspective of a new restaurant, it’s all about making sure that their experience is second to none. We should never put the seed of doubt in a customer’s mind. When there are problems, either in terms of the food, or there are things beyond your control, such as drainage and hygiene problems, this can turn your customer off. It’s important that in these situations you focus on the customer before anyone else. You may have to call a restaurant plumber to get an issue fixed, and this may mean that the restaurant will have to shut for a day or so, which is not ideal, but in the long run, you’ve got to think about your reputation. The customer needs to be satisfied, so therefore the experience has to be fantastic, because when they inevitably talk about good food and good service, they are inextricably linked, and will result in more people coming to you.

Choosing Your Location Wisely

There are many restaurants off the beaten track that are hidden gems in big cities, but when you are starting out in the food business, it’s important to be as close to the thoroughfare as possible. This means that there can be issues specifically related to being in the middle of a city center, especially in terms of security, but a restaurant in the right location is all about drawing the crowds, accessibility, and providing that potential for growth. Researching if there are startup incubator spaces for restaurants can help, as this will keep your costs low at the outset. Perhaps finding a space that doubles up as accommodation can make it easier for you as you can live there but also cut down on your initial costs.

Testing The Menu

The food is the foundation. Asking trusted people for feedback, no matter how gruesome, will allow you to fine-tune the choices of food. Even if it turns out to be a small menu, if the customers like it you are going in the right direction. It’s not just about the taste, it’s also about the price! Do market research and look for similar eateries in your area and industry that provide appropriate pricing.

Running a food business might be a dream career for many, but there’s a lot of hard graft associated, and it’s not just about the food! Yes, the food is the foundation, but to run a successful food business, you have to ensure that the customer service, the structure, and the intentions are as original as the food.

4 Ways To Make Your Business Stand Out

Collaborative post – may contain affiliate links

If there is one thing that is important for your business, it’s branding. Business branding is something that goes beyond the logo of the business and a few flimsy business cards. It’s not the same thing as a logo, it’s so much more than that! Yes, the logo is important, but the branding you have will make your business stand out and bring the customers in – which makes it a vital piece of your business puzzle. 

You need the logo, but you also need to be able to show the world that you know your business value. This is going to help you to create a personality for your business and a brand identity that everyone will recognize. You want a stunning advertising campaign, too, and you can find help at kw2madison.com for that. We all know the Golden Arches, and the logo for the big companies out there. That’s come from a clever branding strategy behind it, pushing the name in front of everyone so that it stands out in the best possible way. Without further ado, let’s look at some of the ways that you can make your business stand out from the rest of the market.

You Need Purpose

Knowing the purpose of your brand is so important, otherwise you can’t even begin to look at the style and design behind the branding. You need a structured purpose and this will map out where your business is going. You should have an idea of why your business exists, as well as the impact that you want it to have on your audience. Once you know that, you can ensure that the customer experience is perfection.

Excellent Customer Service

People talk. It’s a fact – they talk to each other online, in person, in emails – they talk to each other and they’re talking about their experiences with brands. They recommend their favorite businesses and they discuss the things they don’t like about them. So, if you want to really stand out among your customers, you need to excel when it comes to customer service.

Be Unique

You can think – and be – bigger than any other companies in your industry, and all because you’ve decided to be unique and not copy what others are doing. Do things differently to your competition, and you’ll stand out because of it. Look for ways to remain ahead of the curve, even if that means regular reinvention of your business. If you keep your customers refreshed, you’re going to stand out from the competition.

Have Personality

Blog, vlog and post content to give your business a personality that’s separate to the professional exterior that you show off to clients. You need to be relatable, and you can do that with the right business personality. You could do this with your packaging and style, sure, but you need to give your business a face behind the magic.

These four options aren’t exclusive to make your business stand out, but they are going to help you along your way.

Onwards and Upwards

Collaborative post – may contain affiliate links

You’re going great, your business is ticking along nicely and you’re feeling relaxed and in control of your life. Should you take your foot off the gas? Absolutely not, it’s at this point you’re in the perfect position to take time out and think about where you’re business is going next.

If you’re hitting your targets month on month then consider upping those targets. Yes, you want them to be realistic but without challenging yourself you’ll never fully realize what it is you’re capable of or how much more you’re capable or earning. 

In this article we take a look at some key ways you can drive your business forward and find some inspiration to take your company to the next level.

Reach Out to Customers

You might not see the immediate need to talk to your customer base but re-connecting and finding an opportunity to get your brand into their inbox is never a wasted opportunity.

Start by thinking about something like a customer survey. What useful questions could you ask a customer that would make them feel listened to and help you to make some of those little changes that enhances your customers’ experience of dealing with your site?

Send out a survey with specific, actionable questions being aware at what time you’re sending and how long it takes to complete. You know your customers well enough by now and if the majority are office work-based women, aged between 20 to 35, you’ll realize that first thing on a Monday is not a great time when everyone catches up on emails and begins planning for the week ahead.

Revamp Your Site

As your business grows so your website needs to grow with it and if you want to stay fresh and relevant then think about how you might up your game in terms of your site. Talk to a web design agency about what changes might enhance your customer’s experience but also adding some more engaging visual elements as well.

Don’t be afraid to be bold with any changes, now’s the time to make these kinds of decisions, particularly if you know that they’re a sound investment for the long term success of your business.

Your business can stand up to being challenged and being given the chance to grow. Giving yourself the opportunity to find new and better ways to talk to and attract customers is something every business should take part in regularly but when things are going well, you have the luxury of being able to do it with relatively little pressure.

Run through your website from a customer perspective and experience what it’s like to find information, make inquiries and purchase your goods or services from start to finish. Be honest about your experience and make those little tweaks that will have your customers coming back for more. Grow your business, grow your profits and see just what you’re capable of as you take your company up to the next level.

5 Benefits Of Customer Feedback

As business owners, managers, or employees, it’s often easy for you to describe what your company offers. It’s important, however, to know how your customers would describe your company. That’s where the benefits of customer feedback come in. Does their perception of what you offer match what you intend to offer? Are they satisfied with your customer service? The only way to know these details, and a whole lot more, is to reach out and ask.

Customer feedback can be invaluable to just about any company. It can help you fine-tune your business. It can also help you ensure the experience you’re providing your customers matches your values.

Here at Praiseworthy, feedback means a whole lot to us. We recently asked our most frequent users which five words they would use to describe our offerings. Their most common responses were that we are informative, helpful, efficient, easy, and insightful. Talk about compliments! It’s gratifying to know which areas we’re thriving at, and to use that feedback to improve every day.

The most interesting thing about those words is that they also describe the top benefits of customer feedback. (How fitting, since feedback is our specialty!) Below, let’s take a look at five of the top benefits of customer feedback.

To elaborate on the 5 words our users gave us to describe our service, Praiseworthy can help increase your customer retention with the following characteristics:

1. Informative

Unbiased customer feedback is an important tool for gathering information about your company. Yes, sales reports, market research, and other forms of information gathering are also important. However, receiving information directly from your customers provides you with much more actionable information. After all, nearly all of your research and effort stems back to making customers happy and increasing satisfaction. There’s an easy way to find this out: by asking them.

With a platform like Praiseworthy, you have real-time access to customers’ responses and open-ended comments. This cuts through confusion to give you a clear, direct picture of how your clients are feeling. That means you can take the steps you need to make them happier. You can also use that information to praise employees that have done a great job with customer service. When customers are happier, so is your team, and everyone wins.

2. Helpful

There are few things more helpful than knowing exactly how customers feel and what they want. Attempting to guess customers’ needs is difficult. Creating company policies based on assumptions and guesses is even more difficult. Attempting to improve without an accurate gauge on where your customer base stands is tough. It’s like throwing spaghetti at the wall and not knowing what will stick. This can be a huge waste of time and resources. Furthermore, it can damage employee morale.

The simple solution to this problem? Direct customer feedback. With feedback, you can assess what is and isn’t working without any guessing. Particularly when using a tool like Praiseworthy, you can break down your responses into actionable information. Praiseworthy’s dashboard turns results into data—the kind of data that’s actually easy to understand.

Knowledge is helpful.

Knowledge is power. Knowing how customers feel immediately after a phone call with them enables you to do even better in the future.

When business owners and managers have the ability to pinpoint problem areas through this feedback, they can reach out to at-risk customers. They can improve interactions with these customers before they choose to take their business elsewhere. Feedback can be the difference between increased churn and turning unhappy customers into satisfied, loyal customers. Solutions like this make for great word of mouth. This can bring you even more customers over the long run.

3. Insightful

Customizable survey questions let you decide what you want to know most. In fact, one such question helped one of our clients boost their sales by an average of 8 extra tablets per store, per month! Insight goes a step further into general stats and basic information. Insight explores what really makes a company move.

With Praiseworthy’s dashboard, you can break down your survey responses and other feedback into categories and themes. You can understand exactly what a certain number of responses in either direction means so that you can quickly respond and improve.

This makes for increased insight into your customers’ feelings and needs. It also allows for more insight into your company’s day to day functions. The feedback gained from insight operates like a “peak under the hood” in which you can see the inner workings of your company up close. Which employees are best at solving customers’ problems and deserve extra praise? Which policies are turning off customers rather than the intended action of bringing them joy? With increased insight, all these answers are available at your fingertips.

4. Efficient

There’s no way around it: customer feedback makes your team more efficient. Customers are able to take a look at your organization with outside eyes and see the things you miss. They can point out what their surface impression of your company is, as well as what it’s like to work with you as a customer firsthand. This information is simply invaluable, and gathering it through survey responses is about as efficient as it gets.

Of course, the more efficient your feedback platform is, the better. Praiseworthy is a great option because it incorporates details like customer feedback, employee rankings, statistics for multiple locations, reporting, and email updates in one single platform. That means you won’t have to waste your time fiddling with numbers or trying to guess what certain data sets mean. Instead, you can immediately start improving as soon as you receive responses. You can also use the precise detail of the responses to know exactly where to offer praise, and to whom. (After all, high employee morale equals high customer morale. Regularly praising employees for their great work benefits everyone!)

Access to data makes your team more efficient.

Whenever you need to access your survey responses and data, it’s all available to you on Praiseworthy’s dashboard. You can also check out additional reports and charts that pinpoint your customers’ most frequent complaints. Every employee can access their own personal dashboard, where they can parse through results and sort out exactly where things stand. That makes for a lot less wasted time spent trying to just guess what would make their customer interactions better. It also makes the employee feel more in control of their workplace habits and their personal feedback stream.

All of this helps to improve—you guessed it—efficiency. When your team is on the same page about where the company is thriving and where it could improve, you’re already miles ahead. When your entire team has direct access to customer responses, rather than it being funneled through a select few employees who are part of the feedback experience, everyone has a more clear understanding. All of that equates to a precision-oriented, goal-focused team that can reach achievements together. And they can get it all done with a glowing morale and a positive sense of teamwork.

5. Easy

One of the best parts of customer feedback is that it’s easy! Many companies shy away from getting started with the process of collecting feedback because it seems overwhelming. Often, they see choosing a platform as a hassle, and aren’t sure how to utilize any feedback they might receive. This can leading to seeking roundabout ways of attempting to improve the company. Often, these methods that seem faster are actually much more difficult and wasteful of time than simply getting started with seeking feedback.

In reality, getting great customer feedback is incredibly easy. It all comes down to asking illuminating questions and making the process easy for customers to engage in. Praiseworthy can help you do that.

The earlier, the easier.

The earlier you start seeking customer feedback, the more use you can make of it. Because the process is so simple, it’s helpful to get started as soon as you can. This way, you can track trends in customer responses over time and look for changes and patterns. This is just as helpful for a company that getting off the ground and shaping its customer policies as it is for massive, long-standing organizations.

Getting started is easy too.

Thankfully, set-up is simple. Getting ready to go with Praiseworthy is as easy as selecting a few settings and getting things rolling. From there, you’ll be privy to a massive series of game-changing insights about your customer base. This is a whole lot easier than playing years-long guessing games about what customers might want or how employee morale might be improved.

When you start collecting feedback, you’ll have all the information you need in an easy, user-friendly platform. If needed, you’ll be able to update or adjust the questions you ask customers over time to best fit your goals. In the process, you’ll easily build a happier, stronger relationship with your customers. After all, nothing makes a customer feel more valued than creating a dialogue with them. When they know their opinions and their business matter to you, they’ll be all too excited to keep coming back and to help you grow.

Besides being an entrepreneur, Misa Chien is an asian model and cooking show host based in Los Angeles.  Her other blog, Nom Nom TV, a dinner ideas blog, posts articles everywhere from top items to buy at 99 Ranch market to the best way to prepare soba noodles.

This One Simple Survey Question can Drive Massive Growth

Passionate about Customer Service? Sign up for free content about customer service and the customer experience here.

Wondering how to drive massive growth? Your solution may be through one simple survey question.

Aamir Noorani has found such method. Noorani is the Chief Operating Officer of Dr. Cell Phone, a leading and innovative electronic repair store. Noorani and his brother worked at launching the store and empowering it to thrive since 2006.

Noorani needed insight from customers but wasn’t exactly sure how to make that happen. Noorani knew that to boost sales, he needed to connect with those whose experience really mattered. They needed a way to measure how likely a customer would recommend their services. This is known as NPS, or Net Promoter Score. (Read more about NPS here.)

Thus, Noorani started working with Praiseworthy, to begin to collect customer feedback, and measure his NPS score in real time.

For any business, customers are essential for it to succeed and grow. (Click here to watch this section of the interview)

“Your customers are the lifeline of your business,” he says. “Your referral and repeat business should make up the majority of your customers.”

Customers, faithful and happy, form the business. “You really need to make them fans of your business,” he says. “A business that people say, ‘wow, that service was so incredible, I’m definitely going back to them next time and tell all my friends and family about them.’”

That recommendation from happy and content customers are what makes businesses like Dr. Cell Phone thrive.

Noorani credits his team for the success in bringing referrals in from positive customer experiences. “They’re the ones that are on the front line, taking care of all these customers and making sure that they’re delivering world class service,” he says.

Extending beyond just point of sales reports and tracking repeat customers, customer feedback can inspire and encourage employees to continue to provide a great customer experience.

“Seeing customer comments was just incredible,” he says. “Instead of just guessing if our customers were happy, they were giving us feedback about what we could do better and positive things, too. That told us, let’s do more of that.”

Those reviews, whether opportunities for improvement or praise for what they were doing well, brought positive change to how Dr. Cell Phone operates.

For negative feedback, they address issues right away, contacting the customer to make whatever was wrong, right.

“All those customer comments that we were seeing, all that feedback has made our business a lot better and more customer-centric,” he says.

In training employees to focus on providing a great customer experience, there must be a balance between being not too pushy but also ensuring to get that referral.

“First and foremost, it needs to be the right person,” he says. Recruiting the right person leads to the opportunity to create that great customer experience.

The Influence of the NPS (Click here to watch this section of the video)

Customer feedback often centers around one very important question, a question that is captured in the measurement of the net promoter score. The net promoter score survey is the question of ‘how likely would you recommend the business?’

So what happened as a result of Dr. Cell Phone’s use of Praiseworthy customer feedback surveys?

The results Dr. Cell Phone has seen: an increase of 24 points since their involvement with Praiseworthy. Their score of 72 is very high in the retail field. A lot of people are being recommended to visit the store.

Reconnecting with negative reviews has improved their NPS in that by reaching out to customers to remedy whatever issue arose, customers appreciate that attention. And they’ll tell others.

“More and more we’re relying on the recommendations of our friends and family,” he says. “What a lot of customers are doing now is asking their friend, ‘where’d you get your phone fixed?’”

The magic words of “Would you recommend this service to your friends and family” can help boost recognition and popularity. “It’s a question that our company talks about every single morning. It’s going to be the engine that brings the business 10-15 years from now,” he says.

Like what Dr. Cell Phone has witnessed, an increase in NPS means an increase in sales.

Besides being an entrepreneur, Misa Chien is an asian model and cooking show host based in Los Angeles.  Her other blog, Nom Nom TV, a dinner ideas blog, posts articles everywhere from top items to buy at 99 Ranch market to the best way to prepare soba noodles.