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Operations: Increase Sales, Improve Efficiency With a Benchmarking Strategy

Benchmarking can be used throughout your organization to answer questions about the effectiveness of new initiatives. If you’re skeptical of how benchmarking can deliver results, consider these two questions and how benchmarking can provide answers. Once you’ve tried these tactics, you’ll find that benchmarking elsewhere within your company can provide consistent strategies for achieving growth and profitability. Will better service increase customer value? Choose 2,000 of your best customers and separate them with an AB split. Flag the A customers in your order management system as “platinum.” At every contact point these names should be identified as your best customers. Customer service reps (CSRs)

Find New Customers Without Breaking the Bank

You have a slew of choices when trying to reach prospects without paying postage, including direct response space advertising, broadcast and other channels. By Denny Hatch It is imperative to determine the lifetime value of customers by source. Robert Hackett, RRD Direct’s vice president of sales, provides the following formula: Lifetime value is a function of frequency of purchase, multiplied by the gross margin, multiplied by the duration of brand loyalty. What can you afford to pay for a new customer? To make that determination, Gary Hennerberg of the Hennerberg Group suggests you take the following steps: --Research customer lifetime value.

International E-commerce (496 words)

Your e-catalog is set for international release. You’re using the local currencies, culturally relevant copy, the best international character set in the business, and the native language right down to the intricacies of dialect that can change in a matter of a few blocks. What could stand in your way? Payment. If you are only offering payment by check or credit card, you’ll significantly bottleneck response rates. Research carried out by Forrester Research points out that 85 percent of all Internet users do not buy products online because they are unwilling to use their credit cards for Web purchases. A study conducted