customer service is key!

What's the most important thing about running a business?

customer service!

No matter what happens you have to make sure that your customer's have a great experience at your store, whether its an actual store or its an online store. either way you have to make sure that they have a pleasant experience. That way they are more likely to tell their friends which is the best marketing there is.

Our company is definitely customer-centric. We redesigned our website and processes as well as products through customer suggestions and comments. This has helped us greatly increase our ability to reach other customers and markets.

I had always thought that great customer service and experience was one of those things that was a universal given in the business world. Yet when I shop at other onlne stores or even physical stores, I think many of the employees and managers have forgotten this. I am rarely greeted upon entering any store, the employees there don't smile or even say thank you or have a nice day.

These have become some small things that I come to expect when I'm spending my hard earned cash, whether it's on pet food or a hamburger. It seems that more people just seem down or just don't give a care about their job. This is a potential hazard for the company if their front line of customer service are these high school kids that just don't care. That sends a deep message to the customer. It says this company sucks, the product sucks, just leave.

I have in fact been known to do this. If a worker or something doesn't greet me or seems to be avoiding me, I will leave the place immediately.

So word of caution to everyone old and new...make sure that your employees are happy because without them, there wouldn't be a company, and if they are miserable, then they will make the customers miserable. This is just a given, so make sure that you treat your employees well whihc inturn, they will offer the customers the best experience there is.

marketing powers

Over lunch yesterday, paul and I went over some marketing ideas for Paper Street. We are getting fresh out of ideas for how to market to people on our limited budget. We are hoping that the upcoming mini iPod promo will kick start our sales especially for the holiday seasons.

We will see what happens, but we are actively looking at other ways to increase sales. Some sort of cross promotion is going to have to happen if we are going to increase sales.

I guess we will just have to wait and see.

in the beginning

In a couple of weeks, it will be the 1 year anniversary of the launch of my company, Paper Street Teas. Although it wasn't called that. We started out as Teanas Tea Co. and then ran into some trademark issues. But we have that resolved and are moving forward to become the greatest tea company of all time!

We had gone through quite a bit of changes. Aside from the name change, we went through packaging changes, logo changes, marketing tactics, and much much more. But the one thing that hasn't changed is our gourmet teas and customer service.

I can't beleive how far we've come. So many people said we wouldn't succeed, but we knew better and we pushed on. It's definitely been rough for us since our funding came from our savings and whatever we could sell to start this company. I'll tell you this...it wasn't that much. But it drove us to be really creative with our marketing and to make sure that we spend our monies on things we really needed. Of course we had a few blunder purchases, but that's ok. How can you learn without making mistakes?

Tradeshow after tradeshow after tradeshow...I love it because with each new tradeshow, we see how much bigger the tea industry is getting, and how we are really in the beginning of the new wave of tea drinkers.

I know that I'm writing this to not only keep track of our progess, but to also just reflect on what has been done thus far.

That's it for now. It's late and there is still much work to do. Do a recap of the year soon.