How our fight for Customer Service Appreciation turned into a small business...
We love customer service! It's unbelievable what great customer service and a genuine desire to deliver value to customers can do to a business. And the people in the business. And the customers!But as gratifying and rewarding as our work can be, it can also be extremely frustrating... difficult customers are a challenge, but the worst is when businesses don't appreciate the value of great customer service.
It's a lack of understanding the value of customer loyalty, really.
Customer Service Point was born out of this frustration... Frustration with the proverbial pointy haired bosses and CEO's who see customer service as a cost center, not a profit center. A short-term, short-sighted way of thinking that is all too common! Bah!
We don't care that they run their businesses into the ground, with their brainless spreadsheet mentality (yes, many business are actually run by Excel! But that isn't Excel-lent... ), but we do care about the fact that they jeopardize our jobs.
Who are we?
Hi, we are Erwin & Marjan Steneker. We live with our 3 children, Wijnand, Linda and Philip, in the lovely town of IJsselstein in the Netherlands. Erwin has worked in both sales and IT support for over 13 years, and since Marjan takes care of the kids, she has much experience with customer service as a customer! But no matter how we experience customer service, we know the value of it.
The value of your efforts!
Erwin worked for a boss who didn't understand the value of customer loyalty, or the value of a motivated customer service team. So he left that business and went to work somewhere else.
Why Customer Service Point?
But we felt the need for recognition of the importance of great customer service, and the value of our work. And maybe earn some extra income in the process. So we started to look at the Internet as a platform for talking about our passion. However, we didn't have much success in the past with that...
Now, in the past, we've tried to build a website to get some additional income like so many at the time, but were unsuccessful with it. We really didn't understand what it took to build a website that actually attracted visitors, and while it was a beautiful website, there was no-one to see it. :-(
Fast forward to the present day: a completely different story! Many find the information on our site quickly through Google and Yahoo and MSN. Every day more than 500 individuals from all over the world come check out the site and hear our point of view on customer service. In fact: you're one of them!
We publish a (sort of) monthly newsletter with over 900 subscribers. The feedback and gratitude we receive is absolutely wonderful.
So what's the difference?
When we first started on the Internet, we really knew nothing. "Build it, and they will come..." we thought.
Uhm, well, no. :-(
It doesn't work that way.
We learned it the hard way: you have to have a game plan on how to attack the Internet. And you need the right tools to analyse what people are actually searching for. The right tools to deliver it to them. Plus the statistics to see what works and what doesn't. And, last but not least, the motivation to make it a success!
Well, motivation we have. And we were lucky enough to stumble on a system ( Site Build It! ) that helped us with everything else!
And results we have: 500+ daily visitors, 900+ subscribers, recognition from people around the world, and the site is making us $800 a month (and growing). Not bad for a hobby! (ok, it's getting a bit out of hand...)
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February 2007 update: our traffic
has increased to 700+ daily visitors on weekdays, 1150+
subscribers, and we are now steadily making about $1100 / month! And when you search on Yahoo on the (very generic) term customer service, you'll find us at #15 (at least at the time of writing!), so many more people are finding our site... Hurray! We're constantly amazed about the progress we make! Couldn't have done it without Site Build It! |
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April 2007 update: our traffic
has increased to 800+ daily visitors on weekdays, 1375+
subscribers, and we are now steadily making about $1200 / month! When you search on Yahoo on the (very generic) term customer service, you'll find us at #12 (at least at the time of writing!), just below Lego.com. Speaking of which... |
Sidebar
People ask us all the time how we're making the money, since we don't sell products
(yet!). Well, the bulk of our income comes from little ads shown on the pages. A program called Google Adsense puts these ads on our site, and pays us when someone clicks on it. Sometimes 5 cents, sometimes 5 dollars!
Google has made this very easy... you put some code on the page, Google reads the page to see what it is about, and then puts ads up that fits the info already on the page. And when someone clicks, it's money in our pockets. :-D
There's no easy money on the Net, but this comes darn close! ;-)
Our snowball is rolling... The only thing we regret, is not hearing about it sooner! :-)
Let's face it. Customer service isn't appreciated to it's full value. And we notice this in our paychecks. :-(
Site Build It! was our break. It has brought us so much more than we expected. Appreciation and recognition around the globe. And a nice side
income as a bonus.
See this little interview with Dr. Ken Evoy, and see what convinced us... Well worth your time, we promise!
Thanks for stopping by!
We're so thrilled about each and every visitor. We'll continue to spread the word on great service for people like you, who take the time and effort to search the Internet for information on improving customer service.If you like to read customer service articles, we invite you to subscribe to our newsletter, Customer Servings. That way you'll get thought provoking articles in your mailbox. And you stay up-to-date with everything going on here at the site.
Extra bonus: You'll get access to the exclusive Member Info Point, where we have some free downloads of e-books lined up for you, with more to come.
Subscribe by entering your info below:
Thank you so much. It's a pleasure!
At your service,
Erwin & Marjan Steneker.
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