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One of the most important forms of advertising your business is word of mouth. This crucial method has been used for millennia as people who offer products or services develop a reputation for being trustworthy and dependent or someone to stay away from.
If you’ve ever been involved in a business transaction in which you felt disrespected, undervalued, or ripped off, you probably shared that experience with someone who in turn chose not to use that business in the future. By focusing on your customer experience, you can ensure that any feedback from clients to their social network is great word-of-mouth advertising for your company!
Here are 5 vital tips for improving your relationships with your customers.
How to Make Your Customers’ Experience a Positive One
1. Open the lines of communication. If your customers feel like they can communicate with you, they will come to you with both compliments and concerns. Encourage communication through whatever method you prefer, but make sure you tell them how long it will take you to respond and do so in that timeframe. Otherwise, they are still going to communicate their complaints – to everyone but you!
2. Invest in a CRM. A CRM is a customer relationship management software that handles everything about your clients and can even interact with them. The focus of this software is to improve your business retention by immediately communicating with your customers, troubleshooting problems, and handling things that can be automated so you don’t have to.
When you look for a CRM, you’ll see a lot of information on the two most commonly used: salesforce vs hubspot. Do your research and decide which works best for you.
3. Offer more than your competitors do. Depending on your niche, you may have lots of other competitors who can do the same work. What makes customers come to you instead of them is what you offer that is over-and-above the others.
In addition to how you treat your customers, find ways to reward them for their loyalty, offer them discounts, or show your appreciation. A customer that feels valued is more likely to stay loyal.
4. Make your relationships personalized. Get to know your customers. Ask about their families and their interests. Don’t just zone out when they answer you, either. Pay attention and then write down notes (store them in your CRM) later.
If you can find a way to incorporate their tastes, goals, and dislikes into your service with them, you may have a customer for life.
5. Meet or exceed your deadlines and promises. Emergencies happen and you may be unable to deliver on a scheduled deadline. If you have proven to your customer that you are reliable and dependable, they will probably not mind if you occasionally have to delay your phone call to them or final delivery, but if you do this all the time, it’s an easy way to lose a customer and generate poor feedback.
The Customer is Always Right
Even when they are driving you crazy, you should try to go above and beyond to create a good customer experience. The customer may not be right, but they think they are, and it’s up to you to placate and fix the situation. When you focus on the customer experience, these problems start to take care of themselves before they become major issues.
This is strong business sense and will more than pay off with the excellent word-of-mouth you are generating by being a dependable, reputable company to deal with.