“Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer” — I say keep your customers the closest. That’s the right way to build a relationship of long-term trust with your customers; ultimately helping you achieve the desired levels of success.
But how, exactly, do you keep your customers close? There are numerous ways to do that. You need to engage with your customers actively to make them feel your presence resides with them.
Here are a few things you can do to engage with your customers, and as a result, keep them close.
Customized interactions and active responses
To make each customer feel “special”, you need to interact with them uniquely. There are several ways you interact with your customers regularly, but let’s have a look at social media interactions as an example.
If your social media team copies the same comment and pastes it in response to every customer query, you might want to reconsider their training. Customers don’t like robotic replies pasted into their comments section. You need to make them feel their queries are being read and considered in detail. And to do so, you need to provide them responses specifically tailored to their comments.
Moreover, the speed of your responses also plays an important role. Customers pay more attention to answers that are sent to them quickly. For instance, let’s say one of your potential customers is considering getting one of your products and comments on your Facebook post asking about it. If your team replies to that question the next day, the customer might already have bought the same product from another company. If your team had replied to that comment earlier, you’d have more chances of landing a new customer.
Appreciate them and honor their feedback
Customers are the ones your business relies on. Without them, your business has no one to sell its services — leading it to eternal doom. It doesn’t hurt to appreciate your customers every once in a while to say thanks. Moreover, giving away some freebies like extras or discounts can do wonders too.
Furthermore, pay attention to what they have to say about your products or services. Conduct surveys, collect customer input, analyze it, and make improvements in your business to get ahead. Some small businesses may not realize it, but customer feedback is the key to perfecting what you offer.
One-size-fits-all doesn’t work
When your customer gets in touch with one of your support agents, they expect a response specifically tailored to them. They don’t want to hear the usual jargon that mediocre support agents tell everyone.
Your support team has to be trained to listen to customer queries effectively, then provide customized solutions to solve their problems.
Small- and medium-sized businesses often don’t have their in-house call support departments — and for good reasons. Such departments are hard and costly to set up. That’s where a phone answering service comes in.
A phone answering service will professionally take care of all your customer queries. They have trained professionals in this industry and provide tailored support to each customer.
Respond to concerns
Customers often have disputes and concerns about who you are and how you operate. To support transparency between you and them, make sure to respond to their concerns as clearly as possible.
Keep it personal — not transactional
To build a relationship of trust and responsibility with your customers, you need to stay personal with them. Don’t make them feel like they’re just one of the many transactions that your business handles every day.
Your support agents need to handle the customers in a conversational, friendly, and natural way.
Final thoughts
Customers are at the forefront of your business — so you need to keep them close — very close. With the tips and methods mentioned above, you can make sure to build a better, trustful, long-lasting relationship with your customers.
