Building good customer relationships is at the core of any successful business. If you don't have good relationships with your customers, you can quickly find that your brand develops a poor reputation. However, building solid relationships that are built on trust isn't always easy. When you're trying to make a positive impression on many customers at the same time, it's hard to treat them as individuals. But there are steps you can take if you want to create good, long-lasting relationships with your customers so they not only keep coming back to you but also become ambassadors for your brand.
If you want to make sure your customer relationships are strong, there are many different things you can do. Take a look at these tips to make sure your business has excellent relationships with customers.
Get Involved with Your Community
When your business is involved with a community, it shows that you care and have values beyond simply making profits. There are different communities you might connect with, including local communities or online communities, and various ways you can get involved. You might sponsor local events or connect with a local charity to show that you care about the community. Even connecting with other businesses in your community is a good way to get involved and demonstrate that you want to invest in the health and growth of the community. Nurturing a community online is a great option too. You can build online communities on social media or even through your own website.
It would also help your business to show you care by listening to your customers. The audience for your business matters and one great way to show that to them is by listening to their feedback and adjusting accordingly. You can tailor the customer experience to match their wants and needs, but you need to collect feedback in the right format. A common and effective way to go about it would be through customer satisfaction surveys. Customers will let you know what they thought about your product or service, and from that you can see what needs to be changed.
Know What Your Customers Value
It's always important to know what matters to your customers. You need to know more than what product or service they're looking for too. It's also essential to think about what their most important values are. Are they thinking about the ethical practices of your business? Maybe they value good quality in the products they buy, or they strive to save money whenever possible. Once you know what matters to your customers, you can ensure you're providing them with the best service. You can make sure your values align with theirs so that they're loyal to your brand.
Be Clear About What You're Offering
Being careful about expectations is a must if you want to form good relationships with customers that are based on trust. They need to know what they're getting in return for their money, as well as what they're not getting. It's vital to be clear in the language that you use, both with communications such as marketing materials and with more official legal wording with things like contracts or terms and conditions. With so many new cloud-based businesses emerging and growing, many of them benefit from speaking to a SaaS contract lawyer to ensure they check all of their legal boxes. Hiring a lawyer is often a must for businesses that want to be very clear about what their customers are paying for.
Show You Care
People want to think that the businesses behind the brands they use actually care about them as customers. They definitely don't just want to be seen as money-makers. Treating your customers as individuals is important, and showing that you care is one of the ways you can do this. There are plenty of different ways to show your customers that you care, and you might use different methods depending on what type of business you run. Retail customers might receive discounts on their most-purchased items. You might congratulate clients on important things that happen to them. Or you could have ways to show compassion to customers who are experiencing difficult times.
Make Things Easy
Offering convenience to your customers is often an easy way to build good relationships. When you make things easier for them, it can also help to make things easier for you. There are various steps you might take if you want to make things easier for your customers. For example, offering different ways to contact your customer service team gives them a choice and allows them to select the most convenient option for them. Giving customers different delivery and return options is another way you might make things more convenient for them. Ask them about what makes things easier for them.
Personalize Interactions
If you want to build good relationships with customers, you need to show that you're willing to treat them as individuals. One way to do this is to personalize interactions with customers. This doesn't have to mean personalizing to every individual one by one, although there are ways to do that too. It can be as easy as using a person's name in emails sent to them, but you can also segment your audience and ensure different groups receive the right communications. You could have personalized offers for your customers or personalized product recommendations based on what they have purchased or viewed in the past.
Let Customers Get To Know You And Your Staff
It’s hard to build a relationship with a company if you’re only able to interact with anonymous employees. Consider providing some personal information to customers to help humanize your company. You don’t have to divulge too much information, however - with permission from your staff members - you could consider signing off emails personally, using profile photos for emails/instant messages, or even publishing personal bio pages of you and your staff members online. Online bios such as this one of Travis Preston of CalArts give a good example of what information to provide. When it comes to physical stores and offices, you can consider options such as name badges and ‘meet our team’ photo boards.
Go Above and Beyond
As well as providing the basics to meet your customers' needs, you can also think about how to go above and beyond for them. There are often ways to go the extra mile, even in small ways that don't take much time, effort, or cost. Going above and beyond could mean taking extra time to listen to customers, even about issues not directly related to your products or services. Or it can include providing free extras when they buy something so that they get even more value for their money. There are many ways you could achieve this that will work for your business model.
Keep in Touch (the Right Amount)
Staying in touch with your customers helps to ensure your brand remains in their minds and they think of you when they need your products or services. It's important to contact them in various ways, such as sending emails or communicating via social media. However, you also need to be careful not to contact your customers too much. If you're constantly trying to communicate with them, it can start to get annoying and intrusive. You need to be careful about how frequently you contact customers if you want to keep in touch but avoid putting them off your brand.
Reward Good Customers
Giving rewards to customers is another excellent way to form good relationships. It shows them that they're appreciated and gives them more value for their money. Rewards could be points they build up from a loyalty program or membership, which they can then redeem for discounts or other perks. It could also be something like discount codes that are just for them or other benefits that they receive when they remain loyal customers. It encourages them to stay with your brand and spend more money, as well as incentivizes them to recommend your brand to others.
Get Involved with Your Community
When your business is involved with a community, it shows that you care and have values beyond simply making profits. There are different communities you might connect with, including local communities or online communities, and various ways you can get involved. You might sponsor local events or connect with a local charity to show that you care about the community. Even connecting with other businesses in your community is a good way to get involved and demonstrate that you want to invest in the health and growth of the community. Nurturing a community online is a great option too. You can build online communities on social media or even through your own website.
Use the Right Tools
Make sure that your business is using all of the right tools to facilitate excellent customer relationships. For example, a feature-rich customer relationship management (CRM) suite will help you to manage relationships with customers across different channels. Exploring different tools that can be used to stay in touch with customers in different ways is also an excellent idea. Marketing automation can help to ensure customers receive the right messaging to promote your brand which will also help to strengthen customer relationships. There are many different tools that can help your business to achieve its goals and create loyal customers.
Creating good relationships with customers takes work, but it benefits your business in many ways. There are multiple things you can do to get started with building good customer relationships.
