Did you know that 66% of customers expect businesses to understand their needs and will spend 10% more if they know they’ll get excellent customer service?
Your customer relationships are the foundation of your business. If you continue to improve on these relationships, you’ll increase sales and revenue and build a solid customer-focused brand.
The trick is knowing where to start. The good news is you just have to make simple changes to start seeing results.
Keep reading this guide to learn six ways to improve customer relationships!
1. Get Feedback Regularly
Customers appreciate when a company wants to listen to their complaints and comments. When a company makes changes based on these suggestions, it means even more.
A great way to begin this process is by sending out customer surveys to get feedback on your products and customer service. Make a point to send surveys every time you offer a new product or service.
Don’t be afraid to dive deep and ask questions that allow them to express their feelings.
Additionally, you can consider posting a customer survey directly on your website or sending out email surveys.
2. Improve Communication
Creating open channels of communication is the best way to improve relationships in the long run. Remember, customers need to be able to reach you when they have a question about your products or services.
Customers should be able to reach you by text, email, and phone. Creating a dedicated social media handle for customer support needs would be best. You can use multiple social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Write clear guidelines for this customer support channel that include:
- Response times
- A section for frequently asked questions
- Decide on a voice and tone that reflects your brand identity
- Regularly post helpful content about your products and services
You’ll also need to monitor customer support conversations. Doing this allows you to reach out to customers who have a problem but haven’t yet contacted you.
You can even take it one step further and use technology like Mr. Messaging to start text message conversations with your customers. You’ll be able to request feedback, send surveys, and schedule appointments. Visit Mr. Messaging for more information.
Finally, you can consider using an app and offering 24/7 customer service to improve your communication even more.
3. Focus Less on the Actual Sale
If you’re sales and marketing team constantly tries to push sales, you can end up with customers feeling that you don’t care about their needs. As a result, customers may associate your brand with being uncaring or pushy.
Although salespeople may offer excellent customer service, they often focus on pitching a service or product to meet their sales quotas. The good news is you can quickly shift this focus to build client relationships that last long-term.
To do this, you’ll need to ensure your sales team takes the time to get to know every customer. Find out about their wants, needs, and lifestyle. Ask questions to discover how they expect a particular product or service to help them.
Once you make this shift, you’ll find that you can build relationships that last.
4. Focus On Personalization and Customization
Never forget that your customers are people and not simply sales numbers. Take this philosophy to heart and instill it in your employees.
A great way to improve on this is by focusing on personalization. You can start by changing the way you interact with individual customers. Get to know them and interact on a deeper level. Don’t forget to thank them for doing business with your company.
You can do this in several ways, like sending personalized “thank you” emails. Also, create custom deals for your customers that are relevant to their interests.
Finally, consider sending custom holiday and birthday emails with a coupon that gives them a free product or service.
5. Market Your Customer Service
Let customers know that you value them by marketing your customer service perks. This also lets your customers know that your company is dedicated to its customer commitment.
You can use this as a tool to attract more customers. Whenever you sell a product or service, be sure to include details about your customer service perks. Emphasize support services like text messaging, 24/7 customer service, and your social media customer support handles.
If you market your customer service with your products and back it up, word will get around quickly. Ultimately, your brand will be identified as a brand that puts its customers first.
6. Start a Loyalty Program
Loyalty programs are an extremely effective way to improve customer care and relationships. Loyalty programs incentivize your customers to continue doing business with your company. It also boosts brand loyalty since customers will be more likely to stay loyal to your brand.
You have a lot of options when it comes to loyalty programs. You can choose point programs that award customers points when they make purchases. They can then redeem these points for cash back, free items, or other perks.
Customers can also earn points on their birthday or by leaving reviews on social media.
Tiered loyalty programs are also popular options. These programs offer a tiered system that gives perks based on the customer’s level. For example, if a customer spends over $200 on products or services, they’ll move up a tier and get access to more perks.
Finally, value-based loyalty programs can connect with customers on a different level. Value-based programs allow customers to donate a percentage of their purchases to various charity programs.
You can allow your customers to choose a charity or offer them different options to choose from.
Improving Your Customer Relationships
Now that you have some helpful tips on improving customer relationships, you can get to work making changes in your business.
Make it a team effort by involving your employees. Try a new loyalty program or send out surveys and track the results after a month. Remember, it may take time to notice results, but before you know it, you’ll have loyal customers for life.
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