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Customer Relation Strategy

1. Give all your employees excellent product knowledge.

When everyone in your company can act as support, customers can get their questions answered promptly. Saving your customers a call to the help desk goes a long way toward making them happy.

2.  Train employees in customer empathy.

Customer interactions are emotional exchanges as well as factual ones, so give your employees the tools to share a happy customer’s enthusiasm or reduce a frustrated customer’s tension.

When your staff members make customers feel truly listened to and not simply heard, customer satisfaction rises. You can try proven methods which have led to better customer empathy in call centers.

3.  Build infrastructure that supports great customer service.

That means offering ticket tracking, streamlined self-help options on your website and call-backs instead of lengthy hold times.

Customers perceive looking up a tracking number or reading frequently asked questions as less effort than calling a customer care center, so offering these options increases satisfaction.

4. Resolve customer issues at their first point of contact.

Harvard researchers noted that having to repeat a problem to a chain of customer service representatives was intensely frustrating for customers.

Improve first contact resolution by ensuring that the person who initially handles the call takes full responsibility for it until the customer’s concern is resolved.

Offering live chat support on your website allows for more collaboration behind the scenes. Experienced agents can effectively mentor new hires by “whispering” answers to them as they chat with customers.

5. Empower your employees to make customers happy.

To your customers, any member of your staff becomes the face of your company. When your employees have the power to please customers, they make your whole organization shine.

Instead of focusing on speed and productivity, give your frontline employees permission to take the time they need to make each customer feel valued.

6. Deliver on your promises.

Every package that arrives on time or product that works as intended reinforces your customers’ trust in you.

Customers don’t want you to promise them the moon as much as they want you to deliver it on time and with a smile.

7. Make it personal.

Apologize quickly and sincerely if you’re unable to meet your promises for any reason. Make the apology personal and not just a form letter.

Setting things right quickly for your customer will go a long way toward restoring that low-effort experience your clientele prefers.

If you give your customers the most effortless experience, they’ll choose you over the competition every time.

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Importance of Marketing Yourself

Road To An Event Manager

http://asyedomer83.tumblr.com/

Syed Omer Ahmed

L’ecole Advanced Studies

Diploma in Event Management, November 1, 2016

Week 3

Class 1

Importance of Marketing Yourself

Even if you think your job has absolutely nothing to do with marketing – you would be incorrect. You marketed yourself to get that job. In fact, each one of us markets ourselves each day—to each other, to your boss, and to potential clients. And, in today’s competitive economy, learning how to market yourself is even more important.

Marketing can occur through one-on-one networking, through reputation, and via others. Networking—meeting people face-to-face—is an important part of marketing yourself. Through these interactions, you can position yourself as an expert in your field.

Your reputation also serves as a marketing tool. Positive impacts you have made in the past will be discussed within business circles and your industry. This can lead to the best form of advertisement in the world: word-of-mouth marketing. If a friend tells you they had a great experience with a caterer, you are much more likely to contact that same caterer. By providing a great food, that caterer has created marketing for himself or herself

Marketing yourself successfully

Elevator pitch: An elevator pitch is a summary of what’s brilliant about you. It should be concise and to the point, but communicate an interesting fact about your skills. Make sure you know your specialty; what makes you unique?

Networking: Networking provides the perfect opportunity to market yourself. Building a network is invaluable as it provides links to individuals and organizations who may be able to help you find an internship or graduate role. Find networks related to your field or career interests.

LinkedIn: Building an online network provides the perfect platform to network. It also gives you the opportunity to join forums and discussions that will help keep you abreast of changes in your industry. LinkedIn can also make it easier for you to research companies and identify who in your network is connected to the company.

Summary:

It’s not just about marketing yourself; it’s about having a product to market. Your marketing strategy will only be as good as the product, so take the time to graduate with a brand that employers will want to buy.

[asyedomer83-blog]

Road To An Event Manager

http://asyedomer83.tumblr.com/ 

Syed Omer Ahmed

L’ecole Advanced Studies

Diploma in Event Management, October 20, 2016

Week 1

Class 2

Starting a Business 

Many Event Planners start out working from home. This can be a great model for setting up an event planning business as it keeps overheads down in those critical early stages of trading and can maximize productivity.

An Event Planner can work from almost anywhere if you have a laptop, internet and mobile phone. Most important are your personality and event management skills. Starting out by working from home keeps costs lower as renting office space can be a huge outgoing for a fledgling business and you may not wish to be tied into a long term rent contract from the outset. Starting from home gives a new business the best possible start during those important early months.

Specialization

Before jumping into the field of Event Management one should do some analysis on his strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. It’s important to know your niche market and why you are starting an event management business. What motivates you? Is it working for your own or recognition or fame or money? What business model do you want to follow or in which department you are interested in such you want to start a 360° event company, who specializes in everything or you want to focus on décor only or stage designing or food only etc or you are interested in accounts department or marketing & sales department etc. Remember your first event will becoming your recognition and people will remember you for that service only. It will cost you good amount of money in advertising and marketing to change the market perception that you can provide other services as well. These are some of the important questions you should answer before jumping in this field.

Who is the Ideal Customer?

To me ideal customer is the one who is ready to spend money.

How to value your products / services?

Go for higher price or lower or follow the market trend? There are many answers to it. Such as to win business in a low season you can lower your price from your competitor to win the business and in the high demand season you can increase your price. Event market also works on the same principle of demand & supply. The higher the demand higher the price.

Employees Evaluation

The purpose of an employee evaluation is to measure job performance. Many evaluations provide quantitative measurements essential for a production-oriented work environment. Other employee evaluations provide employers with metrics regarding the quality of employees' work. The importance of an employee evaluation is that it's instrumental in determining whether an employee's skill set is appropriately matched to the employee's job

Strengths And Weaknesses of Employees

Organizations must continually assess their employees' strengths and weaknesses. By doing so, employers are better able to match employee qualification to job assignments.

If you’re looking to become an event manager then really the only thing for it is to go out and gain some experience. Get a qualification, apprenticeship or job and just make your way up. It’s a wonderful career to work in because you never have the same day twice

Swim when you are ready and start small. Don’t jump into things very quickly

[asyedomer83-blog]

Road To An Event Manager

http://asyedomer83.tumblr.com/ 

Syed Omer Ahmed

L’ecole Advanced Studies

Diploma in Event Management, October 18, 2016

Week 1

Class 1

So I started university on Tuesday after a gap of more than 10 years at L’ecole Advanced Studies for a Diploma in Event Management. It always surprises the amount I learn about event management every day! I really like my course and hopefully it will help me to succeed in the ruthless market of event management. However, I didn’t expect it to be so heavily business. It makes sense though that event managers need to deal with buying stock, dealing with a budget, marketing their event etc. Having a sound knowledge of business will certainly help with this.

Thankfully I have more than a decade of experience in running a family business of advertising & sales. Along with this I am also running my own catering business. We are gradually expanding and it’s an amazing opportunity for me to learn more about the art of an event management.  

Although food is a very small part of an event but it’s one of the key element for any successful event.

Types of Event

Wedding

Corporate

Fundraiser

Annual Dinner

Birthday Parties

Fashion

Musical

 Event Management in Pakistan.

Karachi being the largest and most populated city of Pakistan has the highest number of event management companies followed by Lahore and Islamabad. Karachi even has the higher number of events taking place here but when you talk about the events in terms of revenue or money Lahore is the leader followed by Islamabad and Karachi.

It has many reasons to it such in Lahore and Islamabad clients wants to spend more and sometime to show off as well.

Few important things to remember for any successful event e.g. planning and execution, relationship and coordination between your front and back hand managers is utmost importance. If there is a communication gap between the two managers disaster is bound to happen at the event.  

Successful event managers also make sure that the damage or loss of inventory is not more than 0.75 % to 1.25 % in any event. If the damage or loss percentage of inventory is more than the said formula than there is something really wrong with your labors who are handling the inventory. You need to make sure that the labors are well trained.  

Responsibilities of Managers

Responsibility of Front Hand Manager is to deliver events on time, within budget, that meet and hopefully exceed expectations. Setting, communicating and maintaining timelines and priorities on every project. Travelling to on-site inspections and project managing events. Being responsible for all project budgets from start to finish.

Bank Hand Manager is responsible for dealing with all vendors and make sure everything is readily available on time for the event according to your client’s requirement.  It is also the duty of bank hand manager that vendors are paid on time.

Ultimately, the key to quality in every aspect in any given event is simply doing the little things correctly all the time. It is in paying attention to the finer details of your event that your guests are truly wowed and it is in this same manner that you’ll be able to enrich their experiences

It’s a wonderful career to work in because you never have the same day twice.

Remember no client is small.