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How to Deal with Customer Criticism with Elegance and Professionalism

Thinking about customer satisfaction is important in a business, to ensure they become loyal to our brand, when we provide the best customer service for them. Every business will not be free from criticism, even though the customer has used our services or products many times. As a good brand, you need to deal with customer criticism with kindness, fairness, and respect. The better you accept criticism and suggestions, the faster your business will grow. SMEBrother will explain how to handle criticism well to improve your relationships with customers. Do we need to accept criticism for business? Deal with customer criticism is a must for any business scale. Accepting criticism provides valuable feedback to correct areas that are still lacking, ideas for improvement, adapt to changing customer needs, and grow the company gradually. Not all criticism is bad, because customers can see the side that we don't see. Take all criticism and handle it constructively by highlighting potential issues that have been unnoticed. The better you handle customer's feedback, the stronger the customer's trust in us. Is criticism bad for a company? It depends on how the company receives it. If the company considers criticism as constructive, it can be beneficial. Every criticism can be valuable for the progress of the company, but if poorly handled, it may have negative consequences. For example, if employees receive criticism in an unconstructive way, it can demotivate employees or damage relationships with customers. The more a company receives negative criticism publicly, the worse the company's reputation. In some cases, companies that are resistant to criticism or consider feedback as something personal will prevent necessary changes and hinder progress from being made. Every time there is criticism from feedback or direct delivery from consumers, we need to listen with respect and think about what the next steps are to handle this. Deal with customer criticism professionally We have prepared several things that companies can do to deal with customer criticism. Handling customer complaints professionally will increase the company's reputation and show that we are ready to change bad things, adapt to consumer needs, and become a reliable brand. Let's look at some of the ways companies can deal with criticism. Active listening and empathy When customers complain because they show dissatisfaction, you must actively listen and empathize. Listen to every customer's story without interrupting, acknowledge their feelings, and offer solutions if you can. For instance, when customers complain about your product causing them harm, instead of dismissing their issues, you need to tell the customer that you will find a solution together or offer your other products that match their problems. Apologize and take responsibility Apologizing for the mistakes you made shows respect to customers. You need to accept responsibility for any issues caused, avoid blaming any condition by external factors. You can communicate to the customer to offer a replacement service or product in the next appointment, while offering a form to the customer as full feedback on what your brand should change. Sometimes, customers will feel relieved and lose their emotions after they are heard properly by you. Find a middle ground for the existing problem, so that it becomes a win-win solution between you and the consumer. Learning and improvement Every complaint is an opportunity for improvement. Analyze the feedback, identifying recurring issues or patterns, immediately think of necessary chances in processes or products to prevent similar complaints in the near future. But remember, solving problems collectively will not resolve individual customer issues, but contributes to overall customer loyalty and satisfaction. Plus, every business must continue to learn and never feel safe with their position, by prioritizing customer concerns and build a strong reputation. Documentation Handle every criticism by recording it like a complaints log. Categorize them by severity, type, and resolution. This data informs your business about what steps you have taken, what is still in the development stage, and what has been resolved. Train your team to resolve complaints by providing a complaints log, ensuring they can answer customer questions if they ever have the same question. By continuing to document every complaint, you can keep track of what is happening, and can transform criticism into opportunities for growth. Swift action Customer trust will increase drastically if you can take swift action on any complaints. Even if you don't have an immediate solution, you need to show that you care about their concerns and provide a revised delivery timeline. You can talk directly to the customer or send an email about a revised delivery, ensuring their problem is handled. The longer you let a complaint sit, the lower the customer's trust. Personalization Respond to every customer feedback or complaint by saying their name or reference their specific concerns. Customers love it when they are given special attention, feels like they've been heard and handled well. By personalizing, you can provide trust even though there is no immediate solution. But make sure you try to resolve the issues quickly to increase customer satisfaction. Offer compensation If consumer criticism in a high level to the point of harming them, you need to offer compensation such as discounts or refunds. Although this cannot be implemented for every complaint, you can ensure that the issue level is worth your compensation. You must ensure that the problem is truly fatal, and the consumer experiences visible losses. Next, you need to get their approval, to accept compensation from you as a form of fair responsibility. Another complaint from the customer will not be any concern, because you have made an agreement with this kind of compensation. 5 Effective Strategies to Increase Customer Loyalty Every criticism or complaint must be handled carefully to bring many benefits to the progress of your business. SMEBrother prepares everything for the progress of your business, including tips and tricks for handling customers, attracting new customers, how to survive in a business market, and much more. Visit our website to get everything about SME, and we hope this article can tackle your problems when facing criticism from consumers.

Productive Team

How to Manage a Productive Team in The Digital Era

Having a team with high productivity is the desire of every business owner. A blend of talents who can collaborate will produce good cooperation for the same goal. Everyone understands that team productivity makes a significant difference between each individual's work. That's why a productive team is a must, especially if you are in the digital era where everything feels fast and you must always adapt to survive. SMEBrother has prepared best practices to boost team productivity in the midst of this fast-paced digital era. What does team productivity mean? Team productivity is the effectiveness of a group of people to complete assigned tasks and achieve a common goal within a specified time. A productive team or not can be measured by how much the team produces and how well they work together. Team performance is not only seen from the performance of each individual, but involves everyone's skill, coordination, and motivation to complete tasks, challenges, and opportunities. Even though you have top talent, but if they can't collaborate and have one goal, then easy tasks can't be completed. But, even though you don't have top talent, but your team is solid, you can get the desired output with the right time or even faster than expected. How do you measure productivity in your team? Measuring team productivity is good business sense. Ensuring that every employee can work well will increase employee engagement, higher financial performance, and customer satisfaction. There are several ways you can do this, such as measuring team focus time, calculating team tasks, and using surveys. First, check each employee whether they are using their working time optimally and staying away from distractions. Although collaboration is key, team performances can be maximized if everyone's is in the same focus. To achieve shared success, employees must devote individual time to get a deep work and use their critical thinking. For example, using effective meetings with no time to waste, using a productivity management software, reminding employees not to use their phones except for work matters, etc. Second, you can see from how many goals the team has completed in their timelines. If the marketing team sets a goal with 10 sales in 1 month, see what percentage of sales are when entering the final week. If it has reached more than 6 sales, then your team is on a good track. Plus, you can ask for feedback from each team member to rate each other in areas related to team productivity. When employees can rate and respect each other, they will start to motivate, understand, and help others to solve problems and avoid conflicts in the long run. Top ideas to manage a productive team in the digital era Having a productive team is not a dream, because you can always fight for it. We have collected best practices to boost team productivity and maximize your business outcomes. Set clear goals Without goals, your team can't aim something together or have no clear purpose. Clarity in purpose is needed to get significant achievements together. How to create team goals? By regularly reviewing and communicating goals. Once you have set goals for your team, you can create monthly meetings to review goal progress, plus ensure that your team members understand and always align with them. You can visualize the goals by creating visual representations of it to keep your team focused and motivated. Using the right tools and technology One of the advantages of entering the digital era is that it makes it easier for us to align the team with the goals to be achieved. You can provide your sales team with a Customer Relationship Management system or CRM system to support the team with a customer service platform. These management systems can track prospect interactions and what prospects need. Once you have the tools, you need to conduct surveys and meetings to identify areas that use tools whether they can enhance business efficiency or not. For example, if your team feels that the new tool does not provide a significant effect, they can suggest new tools with better task visualization features, easy to use, or more efficient project management software. Basic Guide About Team Building Objectives and Goals Not all good software with lots of reviews can work in alignment with team needs. You need to adjust to the team's capabilities, invest in training sessions to ensure team members can utilize the tools and other resources well. Flexible working conditions Pay attention to your team members by determining what time they can reach peak productivity time. Not all jobs have the same maximum working hours, because each job has its own advantages and disadvantages in each field. You can create flexible working conditions or offer employees to work remotely to increase productivity, significant increase in output, and get employee job satisfaction. If possible, you can offer flexible hours or remote work, suiting the employee's working style and personal commitments. But remember, each team member and leader needs to agree on each schedule to be able to align the completion of the task as a whole. Task prioritization By prioritizing tasks, your team can focus on high-impact activities and team's efforts can produce more results. Prioritizing tasks can be seen from urgency and alignment with strategic goals. You need to ensure that each task can allocate resources effectively and avoid burnout to achieve better results. You can find a software development team to review ongoing projects, what percentage of progress the task is in progress, and ensure the team is still on focus on urgency. Train every team member to identify and prioritize individual tasks to foster a sense of responsibility and ownership. Team productivity is something that business owners need to always monitor, because good collaboration and being on the same goal will ensure business progress. By implementing these best practices, you can create a positive company culture that not only values efficiency, but also fosters mutual respect, adaptability, and a sense of belonging. The goal is to create a team that not only has great individual skills, but also employees who thrive on innovation, collaboration, and shared success. SMEBrother has many other tips and tricks to improve your business level from small business sized, medium business sized, and above. Stay tuned for other interesting information from us, and hope this article can help you stand out in the digital era with your precious team.

Attract Top Talents

Job Fair Trends and Innovations to Follow This Year

Job fairs are valuable events for business owners and HR leaders to get top talent and showcase their brand's culture and career opportunities. The digital era has made the development of the career world increasingly rapid, and HR leaders must continue to adapt to stand out in the market. One way is to know the job fair trends and apply them. The trends not only enhance the candidate experience but also streamline the hiring process and increase the effectiveness of the job fair you will attend. SMEBrother will cover it up in this article, let's check it up. Do job fairs adapts? Yes, job fairs adapt to the job market and technology. For example, job fairs offer virtual options for those who cannot come in person. Plus, employers can provide virtual resources like industry insights, resume reviews, and interview preparation tips. You can save time and money, applicable to both employers and job seekers. Traditional job fairs are still widely used, but continue to adapt to technological developments such as providing QR codes for complete information from the company, sharing website and social media links, using web links to inform application requirements, etc. That’s why learning about job fair trends is a must for employers. Do employers need to prepare for a job fair? Yes, because before you connect and interact with potential candidates, you need forethought and planning. Seeing results in a job fair is not something instant. You need to have a pre-job checklist to set up your success. Some of the most important things to prepare are recruitment goals, how to attract target audience, plan the booth, test the technology, and create backup plans. Top Ways to Attract Top Talent at a Job Fair Defining a recruitment goal will make it easier for you to choose what position you are looking for, what skills and qualifications you need, what job description is suitable for new candidates, etc. Once the recruitment goals have been made, you can sort the demographics of job fair attendees and the number of expected job seekers that suit your needs. Tell the recruiter to promote your company by aligning attendees with the skills you need. Make the booth as attractive as possible, plus test the technology such as laptops, projectors, QR codes, printers, and everything for your booth needs. Don't forget to have backup plans such as spare laptops, data on flash drives, folding tables if the event doesn't provide tables, etc. Job fair trends and innovations to get maximum potential We have prepared the best job fair trends that you can consider before you attend the next event. Speed interviewing candidates With the possibility of many attendees coming to your booth, you need to prepare a speed interviewing method to ensure all candidates can be handled and you get their resumes for follow up. Speed interviewing allows employers to get an overview of skills and experience and build a rapport even in fast conversations. The speed and accuracy of potential candidates in answering is a plus, showing that they are eager to get the spot, critical in processing something, and have high focus. Invite staff at all levels to participate in a job fair Potential candidates can meet with different types of roles in your organization, and employees can have direct conversations with candidates who fit their fields. Plus, employees can show what they can get while working in your organization, how the company maintains their talents, how is the company culture, etc. This will bring a lot of positive results from existing employees and potential candidates. Implementing VR and AR to engage candidates You can implement virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR) for your next hiring event. Create a unique experience for potential candidates by simulating real-world scenarios by providing virtual tours of the workspace, taking a look inside your organization and candidates can engage with interactive content. Interesting things will attract candidates because they can judge that your organization intends to show the best for candidates in the most unique way possible. This value can be an important consideration for job seekers, to assess the value of your company. Hosting invite-only events Job fair events are the first step to find as many candidates as possible and align them with your needs. After the day is over and you have a meeting with your team, you can start creating new events, invitation-only as a follow up to potential candidates. Don't give too much time from the job fair day and your invite-only events, so that top talents don't immediately look for other organizations. This way can bring you many opportunities to get top talents, because your follow up will have a high retention rate. Plan a gift One way to attract new talents is to prepare gifts. For example, you can make corporate gifts in the form of notebooks and pens, umbrellas, water bottles, or T-shirts with your company logo. Useful and quality items can ensure that they will be used by the recipient according to their needs. This will bring joy to students or job seekers at the job fair. Not only how you give simple gifts, but also how you please the audience and spread your brand widely. Portfolio review When job seekers come to your booth, ask them to make their LinkedIn profile as attractive as possible, even if they bring a resume. This session can be an opportunity for job seekers to present themselves in the best possible light, and you can provide a personal counseling session about it. By providing value to potential candidates for their portfolio, candidates will feel helped to find other jobs even if they cannot join you. Having some innovations and job fair trends will make you always stand out in every event and can attract more talents. The goal is to maximize your resources and need new ideas so that your company value is more unique and diverse, does not seem monotonous and can attract top talents. Hope SMEBrother can help you in implementing a job fair, and we have prepared various other articles for business preparation for business owners, tips and tricks for employers to get the best team, and many more. Check our website for valuable information, and take your business to the next level with us.