It’s always better to retain customers than to attract new ones because the cost involved in getting new customers is much higher. Around 90% of consumers shop from different brands and are not loyal to any one in particular. Therefore, it’s important to focus on developing consistent customer relationships.
Let’s take a look at four of the best ways to do so
1. Get to Know Your Customers
The more you know your customers, the better your retention will be. Do research to understand their needs and desires and what delights them the most. Understand why they make a purchase.
From your previous experience, map your customer journey. Explore the available data and analytics to understand your customers’ behavioral pattern and trends.
2. Standardize the Process
Maintain a standardized process throughout your company for a great customer experience. Create clear guidelines and make sure your employees follow them. Address different situations while preparing guidelines so that your team can be prepared for anything.
Go out of your way to give your customers an amazing experience. Surprise them. Never let the quality of your customer service drop in any circumstances.
3. Train Your Employees Properly
Train your employees, especially your client-facing and client-interacting team members. Hire the best professionals for client handling and then arrange regular workshops to keep them updated. Provide a holistic customer experience on all platforms.
4. Deliver Unified Customer Experiences across channels
To maintain consistency in customer service, it’s important to standardize it across different channels. Customers expect to receive similar experiences on all channels. They don’t like to repeat themselves if they have already told you their issue in some way.
Therefore, it’s important to keep track of every conversation you have with them. Address all of their issues promptly.
Tips and Tricks
- Be it social media, your blog, or in a newsletter, stay connected with your customers often.
- Find out which social media platforms your customers use the most and accordingly create a strong presence there.
- Increase customer engagement.
- Feedback is a very important part of building a customer relationship. Listen to what your follower have to say about your product and services.
- Show them that you are acting according to their feedback.
- Always appreciate them if they say good things about you, and try to solve any grievances they have. Keep in mind that you should never take a reactionary approach with customers.
- Make them feel special and let them know that their opinions matter.
Leverage Inbound Marketing
Use customer-generated and influencer content to spread the word about your brand. There is nothing more effective than a good customer testimonial.
A happy customer is indeed a part of your salesforce, as they have more credibility than your salespeople have. After all, trust and credibility are the backbones of a long-term customer relationship.
Check out this infographic to discover more about these customer relationship building tactics.
Author the Author
Samir Motwani is a growth hacker cut from a different cloth than most entrepreneurs. This action oriented technophile may have been trained as a developer, but is a designer at heart. He is currently the CEO of Salesmate, a CRM tool, that is adept at developing low-cost strategies for startups, and defining best practices for budding ventures. You can find more about Samir Motwani here.