7 Tips for Recovering from a Bad Customer Experience | John Simensky

As much as every business would love for each of its customers to have an excellent experience each time they do business with them, in the real world, that’s not always how it works. Even the best brands and businesses have customers who, from time to time, have a less-than-positive experience – for a variety of reasons. So, here are seven tips for how to recover when a customer has a bad experience with your business.
1) Address the Complaint Quickly
Today, a customer may complain at the time of service or wait to make a phone call or email the business. Whenever and however a customer contacts you about a negative customer experience, it’s important to resolve their issue directly and as quickly as possible, for a number of reasons. First, you want the customer to know you care about their business and want them to return, so being quick to resolve their problems helps them feel more positive about your company while they are most concerned about their experience. Also, quickly resolving customer issues is critical in helping keep negative reviews about your company from showing up online. That’s because often, customers turn to review sites, social media outlets, or even blogs to express their frustration about a bad customer experience. So, not only does quickly resolving their issues help make the customer happier – it can also help nip negative reviews in the bud, protecting your online reputation.
2) Identify the Root of their Complaint
When a customer complains about a bad experience, they may mention a variety of issues when they speak with you. They may wander off topic and also share about their overall bad day, or an awful experience with a competitor, or anything else that’s on their mind. But, it’s important to respectfully listen to what they have to say, paying careful attention to the specifics they mention pertaining to your business. Did you miss your appointment window? Were your products or services below the level of quality the customer anticipated? Were they overcharged for their purchase? Did your staff or partners provide poor customer service? There are many potential issues that can arise, but it’s important to identify the root of the problem so you can respond to their specific issue and not just offer a blanket response to any and all complaints.
3) Offer a Resolution Immediately
If a customer is unhappy with your products or services, try to solve their problem and make sure their anger is resolved as soon as you hear about it, before they ever leave your business or, for service companies, before you leave them. The longer it takes for their issue to be resolved, the more upset they are likely to become. To make sure you can consistently offer immediate resolutions to customer complaints, create a system, procedure, or policy for each of the different types of bad customer experiences your business has faced so that you’ll have a go-to way to handle issues as soon as they arise.
4) Take Responsibility for their Experience
Is every customer complaint your fault? Probably not, but it’s important to take responsibility for whatever contribution you have had in the issue. Don’t blame the customer, because that is likely only going to make them more upset. Instead, identify the parts of the issue that your business played a part in, and let the customer know you are aware of your responsibility in the matter.
5) Offer a Heartfelt Apology
Next, make sure to apologize for the customer’s bad experience. Be sincere and genuine, and stay professional in your response. Let the customer know you appreciate their business and are sorry for any inconvenience caused. Don’t be snarky, frustrated, or terse in your conversation with the customer. Instead, put yourself in their shoes and let them know you care. A heartfelt apology can go a long way in helping ameliorate any animosity the customer may have and in keeping a negative review at bay.
6) Provide a Tangible Resolution 
In most cases, an apology alone, while nice, is not enough to truly recover from a bad customer experience. In order to fully resolve the issue with the customer, it’s usually best to offer a tangible resolution. For example, many businesses offer a discount, refund, or complimentary future product or service package, depending on the severity of the issue. If your business has caused harm to a customer or their property in some way, you may need to seek expert counsel on how to resolve the issue to avoid potential legal action.
7) Empower Your Team to Resolve Bad Experiences
“May I speak with a manager?” This is often one of the telltale questions that a customer has a complaint about your business. But often, the chain of command, authority, and approvals to get customer complaints resolved can make the process take more time and ultimately make the customer feel more frustrated instead of pleased at the outcome. So, to the best of your ability, empower your team to be a part of the complaint resolution process so that issues are handled at the front line instead of having to escalate them up for a true resolution. Of course, some situations are more severe than others, and due to the varying nature of customer complaints, they are ultimately handled on a case-by-case basis. But by getting your entire team trained on how to provide great customer service and finding consistent resolutions you can offer for the most common customer complaints, you can help reduce the number of customer complaints that you or your management has to deal with – and help ensure that your customers are happier as well.
How does your business handle customer complaints? Do you have a system or process in place to address bad customer experiences? What do you expect from businesses when you have a poor experience?
Share your thoughts in a comment!
Need help overcoming negative reviews customers have posted about your business online after a bad customer experience? Get our free ebook to learn how.
About the Author
Tiffany Monhollon shares practical tips and insights about reaching consumers across the web as a blogger for ReachLocal.

How Your Business Can Use the New Facebook Cover Photos | John Simensky

Are you familiar with the new Facebook cover photo rules?  You are now able to put calls to action and your website or address information in your Facebook cover photo, but there are still text restrictions.
Would you like some inspiration for what your business can do with a cover photo?
Many people have not updated their cover photos to be in compliance.
In this article I’ll tell you what’s changed and show you 9 examples and how you can leverage the new rules to boost your business.

Facebook’s New Rules

As of March 6, Facebook’s rules state that cover photos may not include more than 20% text. But the previous restrictions that were in place were removed (i.e., no calls to action, no websites and no address information).
The maximum 20% text rule also applies to any photo in a Facebook ad as well, so keep that in mind with your next ad campaign.
There was some initial confusion about how the 20% text area was measured, so Facebook came out with a post that clarified how this area was calculated and what was acceptable.

Check your Facebook cover photo with the Cover Compliance Tool.

Facebook Cover-Photo Compliance Tool
Use this tool by Paavo to help you see if your cover photo is in compliance. All you need to do is to put the link to your Facebook Page (or your Fan Page ID, whichever is easier for you) in the box labeled Fanpage ID and click the blue check mark. Then select the boxes that have text in them.

For cover photos, they have a grid of 25 blocks (5 x 5) over the photo. If there is text in more than 5 of those boxes, your photo is out of compliance.
One thing that is confusing in the example provided by Facebook is that there are a couple of boxes that have text extending slightly into the box and Facebook did not mark them as having text. Hmmm.
Also worth noting is that the 20% text policy doesn’t apply to pictures of products that include text on the actual product. But Facebook goes on to say that they aren’t allowing images that are edited to include text as a “loophole to policy.”
Some of these 9 examples may have a little text that appears in one other box (similar to Facebook’s own examples). The examples are for your inspiration and we recommend you comply with the 5-box maximum guideline to avoid any problems.

#1: Mari Smith – Facebook Marketing Expert

As usual, Mari does a great job with her Facebook marketing and is on top of the trends. Her cover photo does apply the fact that the image of the Facebook Marketing report shown is a product photo and therefore is not included in the 20% text allowance.

You can now have calls to action such as “Click Like!” with an arrow.

#2: Intuit – Small Business Products and Services

Even though it’s a little busy, I like the Intuit cover photo. It showcases some of the good things they are doing, as well as the members of the community. Your Facebook Page is always about your audience and how you can serve.

A good example of a brand showcasing their audience.

#3: Qlixite – Marketing Solutions

Qlixite does a great job with drawing your attention to the freebie that they have every month. The photo is simple and the graphics are eye-catching.

A simple photo with a big attention shift to the Apps space.

#4: James Haydon Coach Realtors

James Haydon Coach Realtors’ cover photo looks nice and is easy to create with Pagemodo. The free version will have the attribution in the lower right corner but if you sign up for their monthly subscription (with more capabilities), you can have the photo without the attribution.
As the new rules state, you can have your phone number on the cover photo and that is a smart idea for local businesses like realtors.

This cover photo was easily created with Pagemodo.

You can also use a free tool like Timeline Cover Banner or iPiccy to create a cool cover photo.

#5: Harvard Business Review

You may just want to keep things simple with an engaging picture. The Harvard Business Review chose an artistic shot from their current magazine.

Keep it simple with an interesting photo and no text.

Make sure you caption the photo to tell more about it and possibly include a link to your website to which you want to direct traffic.

#6: Through a Dog’s Ear

Through a Dog’s Ear has a great example of a cute picture (which is a little easier to do if your business involves dogs) and their tagline and website all in one cover photo.

Add your tagline and your website.

#7: Realty Austin

If your business revolves around your website, have it on your cover photo. Realty Austin has a simple, clean cover photo and their website address stands out.

Add your website prominently.

#8: Inbound Zombie

Talk about minimalist cover photos! Inbound Zombie has a very clear call to action on their cover photo and all within the new guidelines. Once you click on the tab clearly marked Free Webinar, you can then sign up right on Facebook.

No mistaking the call to action in this cover photo.

#9: Lawyers.com

This one may be outside the 20% rule, but I had to share it because it’s cool and it could easily be made compliant with some shifting of some text.

Feature something new.

Lawyers.com uploads a new cover photo that features their latest blog post. When you click on the picture, you get the link to the blog post in the description. Great way to showcase new content!
Final Thoughts
As the Facebook news feed changes start rolling out, it will become even more important to have an engaging and interesting cover photo.
Facebook is putting greater emphasis on cover photos when people interact with your Page. And if you have a Page that is noncompliant, it’s a good idea to fix that as soon as possible.

About the Author, Andrea Vahl

Andrea Vahl is the Community Manager for Social Media Examiner and the co-author Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies. She is also a social media coach, speaker and strategist. Other posts by Andrea Vahl »

I'm Doing Search Advertising, Now What? 5 Campaign Must-Dos

Now that you’ve started a search engine advertising campaign for your business, you’re probably wondering what you can do to get the most out of it. You may be wondering how to maximize campaign performance. Or how to drive down cost-per-clicks while reaching more targeted consumers. In the first part of this series, we’ll take a look at five ways you can boost your campaign performance to improve the return on your search advertising investment.
1. Test Text Ads
Text ads are the backbone of your search engine advertising campaign, so it’s crucial that they are compelling enough for someone to want to click on them and visit your site. You should already have one text ad, but running multiple ads at once can tell you which elements of your ads are the most effective so you can maximize their performance on the search engines.
When writing your ads, take the time to think about the kinds of things that will get potential customers to click, like a descriptive headline, special offer, or a great call to action. You could also try dynamic keywords – a technology that automatically replaces your text ad headline with the exact keyword phrase that was typed into the search engine – which can be effective way to drive more clicks from your campaign. Then, when you know which ads work best for your business (it may take a few weeks or months to really tell), you can use only the ones that bring the most people to your business. And if you’re running search advertising with ReachLocal, our technology will do this for you automatically.
2. Bid On Your Business Name
You’re probably already bidding on top business keywords such as the products and services you offer along with geographic modifiers, like “kitchen cabinet installation Orlando,” to reach consumers in your local area. But have you thought about bidding on your own business name? It might seem counterintuitive, but this practice is actually very common among big brands. Plus, not only does it help you own more real estate in the search results at a relatively low cost, but it also helps prevent your competitors – who may also be bidding on your business name – from showing up when someone searches specifically for your business.
3. Review Your Quality Score
Knowing your quality score can help you make changes that can improve the performance of your search advertising campaign. Your quality score is influenced by the how well your keywords generate clicks, the relevance of your text ad to the terms you are bidding on, and the content on your landing page. But most importantly, your quality score is affected by how effectively all these elements relate to one another, because they can directly influence the user’s experience with your brand.
One way to do improve your quality score if you are running your own search advertising is to make sure you’re bidding on relevant keywords for your brand. For instance, using long-tail, geo-targeted keywords can be much more effective for  your search campaign than broad keywords. That’s because less-specific terms like “braces” can quickly use up your budget without producing great results, since your ad may be showing up for searchers who are not really interested in your business. So, something like “where to get braces Plano” might be a better option.
When it comes to your quality score, it’s also important to make sure your text ads and landing page copy align with one another in order to create a consistent experience for both consumers and search engines. By making these tweaks to your, keywords, text ads, and landing page content, you may start to see an improvement in campaign metrics like cost per click, minimum bid amount, frequency at which your ad is shown, and the position of your ad on the search engine results page.
4. Segment Your Ads
If you’re running multiple, disparate text ads (for different products or services), you can use ad groups to segment the them into smaller, more specific groups – such as one group for an A/C tune-up and one for general handyman services. This way, the ad being displayed for a specific product or service-related search is more relevant to the business-related keywords entered into the search bar.
You can use ad groups to create different ads for specific products and services, seasonal offers, deals and discounts, or events. When it comes to running multiple ad groups, it’s important that the keywords you are bidding on, the text ad copy, and the landing page you’re sending traffic to are all focused on the same topic, which can improve the user experience as well as your quality score.
5. Use Sitelinks
Sitelinks are a type of ad extension that search engines like Google use to display additional content about your business within your text ad. In addition to your website or landing page, your text ad can also show up to six links for additional Web pages you want to drive consumers to, such as a store locator page, deals page, or specific product page. This can be especially useful for driving conversions, because it gives you a larger presence on the search engines.
In addition, sitelinks also give consumers more flexibility over what information they see from your business website, driving more clicks and reducing bounce rates once they land on your site. Remember that each landing page you send consumers to from your text ad should be optimized for conversions, including information like your business hours, location, and a call to action and phone number so that prospects can easily contact you.
What other tactics have you used to improve the performance of your search ads? In the next part of this series, we’ll cover five ways to drive more conversions from your search advertising landing page.

Related Articles

• Why SEO Isn't Enough: 6 No-Brainer Reasons to Use Search Advertising
• Ways to Freshen Your Brand in 2013
• 5 Types of Online Marketing You Should Be Doing By Now

About the Author
Tamara Weintraub helps equip small business owners with information about local online advertising, social media, and content marketing as a writer for the ReachLocal blog.

John Simensky | ReachLocal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH7Ofw0thp4

Is Your Reputation Helping or Hurting Your Business? Get the Ebook

Is your online reputation helping you win more business or causing you to lose potential customers? You may think you know the answer, but how can you be sure?

It’s time to evaluate what your reputation looks like, because your online reputation matters to your potential customers. That’s because today, 97% of consumers use online media when researching products in their local area, according to BIA/Kelsey.

Let that sink in – 97%.

What do your potential customers see when they search for your business online? What do they discover about your business when they visit review sites? What about social media, blogs, and other websites? What are customers saying about your company online, and what can you do about it?

It’s important to know the answers to these critical questions. Our latest ebook, Navigating Your Online Reputation: Your Complete Guide, will help you navigate the tricky process of reputation management so that you can identify any potential reputation issues your business may have on search engines, reviews sites, and the rest of the Web. It also helps you understand how to monitor your reputation and address any issues that you discover. Plus, it offers practical tips and advice you can use to build your reputation and help consumers find great content, reviews, and testimonials about your business.

Get started learning how to manage your reputation online by downloading the free ebook today. 

Source: http://blog.reachlocal.com/692904/2013/05/06/is-your-reputation-helping-or-hurting-your-business-get-the-ebook.html

How to Shift From Guest Posting to Content Marketing in 6 Basic Steps

Eric Enge, May 5, 20137 Comments

•SEO Evolution: Sell, Discover, Deliver & Report on Highly Converting Keywords by Krista LaRiviere, gShift Labs

Perhaps you have been doing guest posting for a while. Regardless of what you may have read about the next major release of Google's Penguin algo, fundamentally, guest posting remains a sound concept. In fact, link building is still legal (the referenced post was +1'ed by Google's John Mueller), you just have to go about it the right way.

This may mean you need to make some changes. If you've been guest posting solely to obtain links, without regard to any other benefit, here's how to make the shift into a high value content marketing campaign.

1. Aim High

You can keep guest posting, honest you can. But, you may need to pick your targets differently.

Major media/blog sites are always hungry for content. Some of these sites do accept guest posting content. It is easy to check to see if they do, with a search query such as: [site:nytimes.com "guest post"] (without the []):

The big key to this is to find sites where the editorial policy is highly respected and the search engine trust for the site is likely to be very high. If you historically pursued guest posts solely for purposes of getting links, most probably with rich anchor text, than chances are that the sites you posted on don't have that high a level of trust with the search engines.

In fact, rejoice when you find a site that won't allow rich anchor text in the post or the attribution. This by itself is a decent signal of a strong editorial policy.

2. Think About a Column

If you are locked into the world of PageRank and rich anchor text, chances are that you would view publishing multiple articles with the same site as a waste of time. Classical PageRank thinking would lead one to believe that repeat posts at the same site would have diminishing value. However, it is time to invert that thinking.

Let's get human for a minute. Imagine I told you I got an article published in the New York Times (I haven't, but that is why I said "imagine"). You would be impressed, right? Now, imagine I told you I had a column with the New York Times. Which one impresses you more? No question that it is the column that creates the greatest human impression.

Let's draw the analogy out a little further. Imagine I told you that I had published articles in 15 different newspapers, including one in the New York Times, and one in the Washington Post, along with 13 other decent quality sites. Which impresses you (as a human) more, this shotgun blast approach, or the idea that I had a New York Times column.

I still vote for the column, as it is a much stronger indicator of a very high level of trust to hae a column than to get one placement. And, trust me (pun intended), the search engines are likely to look at it the same way as they want to understand how people value things as a basis for their algos.

Oh, and if you have a column in the New York Times, it's probably far easier to get other people on other sites interested in publishing your articles than if you don't.

3. Establish Authority

Where you publish is one component of this, but the other major component is what you publish. It has to be new and interesting and help people understand something they didn't understand before.

In general, you won't become famous for writing a new article on "mortage tips":

However, the topic doesn't always need to be totally new. Suze Orman has made a career of making information that has been published thousands of times before more digestable and understandable for the many. But, she still achieved prominence through unique packaging of the content and her personality.

How can you measure your progress in developing authority? Here are a few metrics to look at:

1. Where are you publishing and how often? This is one of the reasons to Aim High and Think About a Column.
2. Are you getting the tweets/+1s/shares/Likes/comments? I don't believe that any of these metrics is the "new link", but, they provide an excellent way to for measuring audience engagement, and hence the authority of an author.
3. Are you getting speaking engagements? This may not seem like a search engine measurable metric, but you can measure it, and you should. Do people want to hear what you have to say? If they do, then the social sharing and high quality writing opportunities will likely follow.

4. Build Strong Social Media Presences

This is just basic common sense PR. Sharing your published content through your social channels can provide a beautiful virtuous circle like this one:

Many people think that the size of your social channel is another way you can measure the development of your authority over time. Don't try to artificially inflate your followings though, as that is a false indicator.

Any social media site or search engine can see the number of interactions you get per follower, or measure the ratio of you many followers to following you have. Strong social media presences are more about the engagement that takes place with your content than it is the volume of followers and friends.

5. Influence Influencers

Relationships with influencers can add a great deal to your overall content marketing campaign. For one thing, they act as accelerators for the virtuous circle we spoke of in the previous point:

The key here is to do more than just meet them, you have to bring enough to the table so they see value in the communication with you. Perhaps like Suze Orman you simplify complex concepts. Or, you may be valued for your analytical skills, or you may conduct groundbreaking research.

It is particularly useful if you can help them solve problems that the influencers have. These may be simple questions they ask in their blog articles or on social media, but anything you can do to attract their attention is great.

One you get to the point where you begin to help or influence them, your social share rate by them is likely to increase. Be aware that these relationships require maintenance. You need to keep influencing them, and if that influence fades, so does their response.

6. Relate

Learn the secrets of creating amazing content at SES Toronto 2013:

• Content Marketing Tactics from the Trenches: How to Execute a Blog & Social Strategy
• SEO Driving Impactful Content

See the full agenda.

It is great to work on developing your connections with influencers, but there has to be more to it and than that. You have to help others. To use a Twitter example, someone with 600 followers may not be a major influencer, but the community will notice if you help them out, and you will create a very powerful fan in the process.

Your efforts shouldn't only be about you or about the influencers (though both are important), but how you play a role in the larger community. Find a way to relate to the community as a whole, and this is a sure way to grow your overall authority.

Summary

There is a lot more that goes into a fully built out content marketing strategy, but there are the major foundation components. From an SEO perspective, all this work relates to making yourself an organic link magnet. As an authority, with great visibility, and publishing great content, you will get links.

Your content will be the stuff that everyone wants to reference, and these are the type of links that Google wants you to get. Organic. Citations. Pure as gold.