Ten Tips for Providing Great Customer Service

Good customer service is the lifeblood of any business.

We’ve all experienced customer service that is excellent, awful, and everything in between, and we know how that experience affects our on-going relationship with different businesses:

• Delight me with great customer service, and you’ll not only retain me as a loyal customer, I’ll also recommend you to others.
• Give me poor customer service, and I’ll not only take my business elsewhere, I’ll also delight in telling others how rubbish you are!

It costs roughly five times more to bring in a new customer than to keep an existing one!

Keeping your customers happy can be one of your best (and most cost effective) marketing tools.

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Does My Business Need a Blog?

The answer is usually YES.

A blog gives you a convenient and cost-effective way to communicate with your existing customer base and attract new customers. You can also use your blog to create a voice and personality for your business, which helps you build relationships with readers.

Use your blog to examine topics in more detail than you can through your web site. Most people come to a blog wanting to learn more about a particular topic, so are happy to read longer articles. A blog can also be a bit more informal than your web site, more closely resembling a conversation that you’re having with your customers.

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A New Way to Order Alltel Services

You can now order your Alltel services online.

Our new online sign up provides a quick and easy way to sign up for Alltel services. It includes details of all available products and plans, making it easy for you to select the one that’s right for your business.

You can also save money by signing up for an Alltel bundle, which combines some of our more popular products. For example, our Virtual Office Services bundle includes 1300 numbers (or 1800 numbers), a live answering service, and a FREE Fax2Email service.

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The Top Four Ways to Perform a Reverse Image Search

If you thought you could only search for images using words, you’re going to love this blog post!

There are a number of tools available, including Google, which allow you to search using an image. This is really useful in a number of different situations:

• You’ve found the perfect image for your web site/blog post/brochure, but don’t know whether you’re allowed to use it. Doing a reverse search image will quickly show you the original source so you can get permission (if required), obtain the image in the correct resolution, and credit the actual source.
• Before you use an image, you want to check to see whether it is being used by any of your competitors. A reverse image search will not only show you how popular an image is, but also who is currently using it.
• You’ve spent a lot of time and effort creating your own images (e.g. photos, illustrations, infographics) and you want to make sure that your work is not being used without your permission. A reverse image search will show you whether anyone is infringing on your copyright.

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Change 1300/1800 Number & Live Answering Plans any Time for FREE

Many providers charge a fee if you want to change your 1300 Number, 1800 Number or Live Answering services to a higher- or lower-cost plan: especially in the case of moving to a lower-cost plan!

At Alltel, we want you to have the service that is the most economical and best fit for your business. That’s why with our 1300, 1800 and Live Answering services you can Upgrade or Downgrade your monthly plans at any time for FREE.

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Easter Service Update: How to Make Changes & Contact Alltel Support

With the Easter holidays almost here, it’s time to make sure your business phone services are ready for the holiday period.

This Alltel Service Update tells you how (and when) to make changes to your services if required, and how to contact Alltel during the holiday break.

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1300 Numbers: Helping Start-ups Keep in Touch with Their Customers

It’s always important for customers to be able to contact your business. This is especially true when you’re first starting out and working hard to build up your customer base.

Unfortunately, start-ups can often be the most difficult types of businesses for their customers to contact. For example, common start-up ”challenges” can include the following:

• There’s no budget for a formal office, so everyone works from their own home offices. That can mean that customers often need to know multiple phone numbers to be able to contact everyone they’re after!
• Some employees may spend time each week working a second job (while they’re waiting for the new business to make enough money to pay all their bills). That typically means there may be certain hours each week when they can’t be contacted by phone.
• Some roles require employees to do a lot of travelling, for example to visit customers or suppliers, which may see them away from the office for hours or even days at a time.

You need to structure your communications so that customers are still able to contact your employees who work remotely, are not always able to answer their phones, or spend a lot of time on the road. The good news is that 1300 Numbers provide you with an easy and affordable way to ensure that your customers can always reach you when they want you.

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Fax to Email: Your Lean, Green, Money-Saving Virtual Fax Machine

New technologies mean that the ways in which we’re communicating with each other are changing every year. And that’s not just for personal communications. Cloud-based “virtual” services have started a revolution in business communications as well.

Unified communications is one of the latest revolutions. As the name suggests, this unifies all of your incoming communications into a single channel, which you typically access via email. That means that you can access all incoming communications including emails, phone messages and faxes from anywhere that you have email access: including from a smart phone.

Of all of the unified communications services, Fax to Email (Fax2Email) is proving to be the most popular with small to medium businesses.

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Having Fun with Phones: Taking a Trip Down Memory Lane

We usually blog about business phone services, and the ways in which technology is constantly evolving and allowing us to deliver exciting new products and services. Over recent weeks, we’ve covered things like smart numbers, virtual receptionist services, advanced call routing, and the benefits that “the cloud” will bring to your business.

This week we’re going to do something a bit different.

Instead of looking at “virtual” telecommunications services, we’re going to look at the physical phones themselves. We’ll take a walk down memory lane and have a look at some of the interesting design ideas and great technological advances that have given us the phones we all know and love today.

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What is a Smartnumber and Does My Business Need One?

Smartnumbers® are highly memorable phone numbers that are considered to be “the best” 1800, 13 and 1300 numbers available.

A smartnumber can be a valuable marketing tool if it is a highly patterned number, for example 1300 50 10 50.

When smartnumbers can be translated into words, such as 1300 ALLTEL, they are also known as phone words or alpha numbers. A caller dials an alpha number by pressing the corresponding letters on a telephone keypad. Alpha numbers can be easier for callers to remember, especially when they can be linked to an organisation’s name or function, for example 1300 PIZZAS.

These numbers are very easy to remember, which makes the ideal for marketing campaigns. They also provide all of the benefits and flexibility associated with regular 1800, 13 and 1300 numbers.

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