Best Practice and How To

Referrals are one of the most effective ways to generate new subscribers for your site at a very low cost, but not nearly as many subscription businesses use this tactic as they should. In this primer, Subscription Insider walks you through the basic of a Referral Program, complete with a directory of 15 Referral Platforms.

Understanding how payments work is a key foundation to selecting the right vendors for your subscription or membership business. This guide will help you understand the mechanics of a payment, key terms, and the key players involved from the moment your customer submits a payment to your business, to when the money for that customers subscription gets into your bank account.

Customer Service, while simple in theory, is quite complex. Keeping customers happy so they can continue to doing business with you is becoming increasingly more difficult in the digital age of rapid information-sharing. In this 1st article of our Customer Service Best Practice series, Diane Pierson walks through a primer of what Customer Service is, how it's changed, and why it's important.

Whether you're new to running customer service or at a growing company that is just building out a formal customer service department, preparing a customer service plan for your company should start with what you already know. Like any journey, the secret to creating an effective Customer Service department is starting with a compass and a map - and refining as you move forward. In this 2nd article of our Customer Service Best Practice series, Diane Pierson walks through the basics of setting up your own customer service department.

When you're ready to implement customer service activities, you'll have to decide whether to hire direct employees or to leverage an outsourced call center. Companies just starting out often leverage a virtual receptionist to make sure the phones get answered, and as they grow they may outsource all aspects of customer service while others choose to keep all activities in-house. In this 3rd article of our Customer Service Best Practice series, Diane Pierson walks through the difference between an inside team versus an outsourced team and 17 questions to ask potential customer service vendors.

One of the best foundations for good customer service is preparing for the common questions that frequently come up. It's imperative to identify inquiries that your customer service representatives may receive, prepare standard ways to respond to those inquiries and know when to escalate an inquiry to someone else.

Your first customer service hire is a key role within your organization, regardless of whether the position is full or part-time. This article explores what you need to consider when you're ready to make your first dedicated customer service hire.

As your business grows, it will eventually be time to scale your customer service activities. This article highlights the customer service challenges a large organization will face, along with some final tips.

The FTC is seeking consumer input on subscription and recurring free-trial offers requiring credit cards that automatically get charged at the end of the trial. Lisa B. Dubrow, Esq. explains.

Offering a subscription trial is often the most debated and discussed topic for subscription businesses. No matter how much experience your team has, the best course of action is to begin with a well-informed plan based on your answers to the questions here.