Improving your customer relationships is very important, regardless of where your business may be right now. There’s always room for improvement when it comes to your customers, and it’s essential that they don’t slip down the list of your company’s priorities. Here are some tips that can help improve customer relationships in your business.
Create More Personalized Experiences
Customers love to feel valued and treated as an individual, so one of the ways to do this is by offering a more personalized experience when they interact with your business. Whether that’s when they buy a new product or they’ve been a loyal customer for so long, treat them in a unique way and not like another number. A nice discount code landing in their emails on their birthday or offering a member’s club to those who have been a regular customer can be two ways to give back. The more personal you can create their interactions with customer service, the better. So look at how your customer helpline is approaching customers. Calling them by their first name is going to be more personal and welcoming, then using a more formal approach.
Improve Response Times
The response times for when your customers are answered back should be pretty instant. From phone answering services, you have, whether that be virtual or handled by an actual staff member, to online contact forms. These should all be responded to within an ideal time because not every customer is going to like receiving a response several hours later. It says something about the company, if you’re not willing to adjust the answering service cost or improve your response time in answering customers, you’re going to lose them eventually. Investing back into your business is essential, and this is one of the ways you can do so.
Have A Variety Of Contact Options
The contact options you give to your customers in order for them to respond to you is important. Any business that is limiting the amount of options is going to raise suspicion. Why wouldn’t they want to hear from their customers? Even with limited funds and resources, having all the options of phone, email, and address for writing to doesn’t cost the earth. The more you can offer, the less frustration your customers will experience in general.
Listen To The Complaints
Complaints are going to happen, regardless of how hard you work to avoid them. You can’t impress everyone, so there’s always going to someone who doesn’t like the product or service you’re selling. Instead of ignoring these complaints, or doing nothing to solve them, you should be doing everything you can to make their experience of complaining a positive one. You want to hold onto every customer, whether their first experience of your company was a good or bad one. By you giving them what they need and solving their issue quickly, they’re likely to either try again or at least have an ok experience coming away from your business. Word of mouth is a powerful form of advertising, so you want to make sure that they’re happy and not walking away angry.
Exceed Expectations
When customers first approach your business, it’s really important to make sure that the bar you set is above and beyond anything they would have ever expected. The reason for this is that you are leaving them with an impression that they’ll always remember, no matter how many mistakes or small, bad experiences that they may have in the future. Knowing that you were willing to give everything and more in that first encounter is worth it when they end up becoming a loyal customer to your business. So always look to exceed their expectations and do everything you can to go beyond what they want. Offer some extra rewards or incentives, and freebies are also a great thing to offer to new and existing customers.
Your customers should be a priority for your business, no matter how small or big your company may be at this moment. Customer service can be done efficiently and effectively, but you need to be willing to always go the extra mile. No matter what the complaint or issue may be, even though a customer isn’t always right, you should do everything you can to resolve the problem with the resources you have. Not everyone will be happy but the majority will come away feeling you did the best you could. That’s what creates loyalty and a good reputation.