Tag Archives: small business

Managing Customer Experience – When Customers Give you Lemons…

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Effective Twitter BrandingTV actor Charlie Sheen, on a tirade against his (now former) employer, blitzed every major media outlet and amassed a Twitter following of 2 million people in about 2 days venting about how he had been wronged by the network executive.

Thanks to Sheen and Twitter, angry people everywhere now have the wherewithal to launch a full-scale brand attack on any service, product or boss that rubs them the wrong way. Businesses have an opportunity to make brand ambassadors out of their most difficult or dissatisfied customers, yet so few fail to do so – why?

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Prank Calls May be GOOD for Business

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How to Answer a PhoneLast week, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker had a very candid phone conversation with right-wing billionaire David Koch – or so he thought. The journalist responsible for the prank call shared a recording of the chat and pundits didn’t hesitate to scrutinize Walker’s every word.

Lucky for Walker’s press team, the Governor seemed to share the same opinions in private as he had in public regarding the state budget, unions and the legislature. But they are politicians – masters of public relations. But for everyone who has ever hired someone to answer the phone – how do you train your sales and support staff to stay ‘on message’?

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Why Some Small Business Owners Won’t Take American Express – and What to do About It If You Do

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Let me start off by saying that I like the conveniences of being an American Express cardholder, but as a merchant, it can be frustrating at times. Here are the popular reasons I hear when other small business owners tell me they won’t take AMEX.

Reason #1 – Chargebacks

While it may not be fair to American Express, there are quite a number of folks who say that AMEX is “notorious” for siding with the customer in a charge-back dispute.

At a previous business, I once had a customer who used our AMEXsoftware for over a year and was paying us software licensing fees in excess of $1,000 per month. When the customer filed for bankruptcy and his business shut down, he called AMEX and claimed that all charges to his credit card from our company – going back months – were all fraudulent.

AMEX immediately reached into our bank account and froze the funds… nearly ten thousand dollars. For a small business, this was a significant amount of our working capital to be taken out of our account. We had to fight for weeks and show the AMEX arbitrator that these were legitimate charges.

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