The answer? A big YES! Here’s how the above functions would be customers and extremely important to your continued business success:

As a vendor & consultant you provide goods and services to a client, however based upon your client relationship, the vendor or consultant could also be a consumer & marketing source to friends, family and other business contacts.

Clients and Consumers are the customer and purchase or pay/contract with you for your goods and services. Clients and Consumers can also be your best free marketers as they recommended you to their peers and continue to use and contract your services.

A Project Manager is also a customer as they not only represent you and your organization (an internal customer), but also establishes the client relationship which is invaluable.

A Business Owner, whether the client, vendor or consultant are all customers and not only have the final say in relationship and continued contracts / services but can also be invaluable in marketing your services via their peers and social media.

In essence, each and everyone that you have contact with throughout your day is a customer to you in some form and are invaluable to your organization. Relationships and marketing through word of mouth and social media can sustain or break any business.

Take care of your customers and treat them as you’d like and expect to be treated. This will ensure top level customer satisfaction and continued growth for you and your organization.

• Facilitate open, two way dialogue with your audience
• Obtain direct and immediate feedback about your product or services
• Extend product reach and open new market opportunites
• Deliver information to customers and partners quickly and efficiently

By creating a community, you have the ability to not only reach your target audience and encourage the interaction listed above, but establish yourself as a leader and a thoughtful innovator of customer service and relations.

Communities offer a wide range of functionality from Community groups within an organization that can interact amongst the group members themselves, to a larger scale communities which includes forums, blogs, and community member interaction.

Determining which is best for you and your organization goes a long way in determining the best type of community set up and software. There is a wide range of paid and free community software packages available. Deciding which one is best for your organization can be overwhelming if you don’t have a good sense and idea of your community goals.

Establish these goals first, what do you want your community to do, who do you want to reach with your community, and what type of interaction do you want your community members to have?  These are all important aspects of being able to set up the correct community for your organization to further your web presence and customer interaction.

A few open source communities that I’ve recently interacted with and have found to be terrific are:

While Ning offered a great community structure previously, the changes that they are undergoing currently will provide an even better community structure in the future. Check out the proposed changes at: http://about.ning.com/announcement/

DotNetNuke (www.dotnetnuke) also offers a great open source structure that provides you with the ability to add and purchase modules according to your needs and customize as needed with a developer.  The support by the DotNetNuke module developers is also excellent and they can assist with alterations if necessary depending on your needs and the module.  I’ve found them to be more than willing to assist.

Communities allow you to reach your audience and interact in a larger and much more open way. Adding this ability onto your website and/or establishing a separate community site is a terrific way to engage your audience and members and provide them with a vehicle for quick and easy interaction.

Recently, I had two different experiences with 1) a well known internet company and 2)  a company that isn’t so well known.  I made purchases that were “guaranteed” to arrive by a specific date.  Due to weather in the Eastern US the items were delayed.  Surprisingly, I had two very different customer service experiences.

From the well known internet company -  I never received any notice/warning, communication about the delay. The items just didn’t show.  I had to keep checking the tracking information in order to determine when I would be receiving the items (which was a moving target due to delays, etc.). I realize with weather related issues it really isn’t in the control of the company, but according to the delivery tracking information, the packages didn’t even leave their facility prior to the weather issues.  Basically, the packages left late in the first place.

From the not-so-well-known internet company – I received an email 2 days before the impending weather hit the East Coast warning me about the possibility of a delay and informing me that I could contact them and cancel my order.  I then received daily updates via email from this company on the status of my order and they also upgraded the shipping type to a higher level in order for me to receive the package sooner than the level that I purchased. At no charge.

The final outcome, my packages from the well known company were over a week late and I never received any type of notice or communication from them at all.  The package from the not-so-well-known company was a few days late and they have a customer for life.  I find my self more apt to read their advertising emails when they arrive, look at their site, recommend them to my friends and family, and place orders for items not really needed. Yes, I am admitting to ordering a few things that I really don’t need.

As far as my continued support of the well known company, I don’t spend any time looking at their advertising emails or visit their site to see what they have that may be of interest.  Just not interested in giving them my money any longer since they don’t seem to value me as a customer.

Customer service plays a very important role on not only current, direct sales, but future sales as well.

No customer service = No sales.

What are your doing to ensure that you have a customer for life?

With this in mind, technologies are evolving to include group activities for your cell phones. Group activities will include creating groups (i.e, family group, marketing group, new prospect groups, etc.) and then being able to either send a text to that group, leave a phone message for each individual within the group, email the group, or schedule a conference call for the entire group to attend directly from your cell phone.

This ability presents itself with endless possibilities and ideas on how to stay in contact with your members, prospects, family, etc.  Business will be able to use this ability easily for quick messages to members, updates, and meeting information. Small businesses will be able to connect to their sales and prospects with marketing items, etc. and staying in touch with family and friends will be more efficient.

Which cell phone carriers and when will this be available?  Unfortunately, this hasn’t been released as of yet, but the idea and concept presents itself with ideas and opportunities that will be beneficial to those who embraces new technologies.

Most member and client contact lists contain one contact for each company. Why is this?  What if that contact moves to another company, leaves the job, is fired, etc.? Who do you contact then?

It is always a good strategy to not only have the person that you consider your key contact/member but also ask for an alternate contact name, title, etc. at the same company.    This enables you to not only grow your list, but also provides you with the ability increase your visibility into other areas of the company.

This really isn’t that difficult to do.  Ask your main contact or member to recommend other people in their organization that may be interested in your services and/or information.  I’m pretty sure that you will receive a positive response from your contacts/members to this question with a listing of a few different contacts.

When visiting with your client, ask them if it would be possible to show you around their facility and introduce you to other departments.  If you have a good relationship with your contact this should be a no brainer and present you with a great opportunity to meet other contacts within the same organization.

One thing I’ve learned over the years that organizations (especially associations) have many layers and many decision makers for various departments.  In most cases, your contact, who may be in the member services department, doesn’t communicate the wonderful products and services that you offer with the IT or Publishing Department.  This relates to lost opportunities and sales.

Asking current members to recommend persons that they feel may be interested or providing them with the opportunity to “forward to a friend” some materials is another way to help increase your list.  This is easily done if you provide targeted member materials via cross media campaigns, meetings/announcement, etc. that you may be marketing to your members, etc.  Adding an option that enables your member to “forward to a friend” allows the member to send the information along and possibly entices the friend to join as well, but also provides you, through programming, to collect the “friends” contact information for marketing.

Multiple contacts within any organization are great ways to strategically build and maintain a valuable marketing list.   Don’t let these opportunities get by you.  Updating your list is the best way to make sure that you have a list of value that will provide you with many opportunities for years.