All customers want you to provide exceptional service. As a small business owner, you may feel that you are doing your best to please your customers if your sales numbers are rising.
However, it is easy to slip and neglect some vital aspects of customer relationship management when you are striving to increase your sales turnover.
Since building a solid relationship with clients can bring in repeat sales, without spending excessively on marketing, you need to pay more attention to your customers.
Here are some tips for providing outstanding customer service.
- Address Your Customer’s Pain Points
Customer pain points are their problems, issues, and frustrations. They are the challenges they expect you to solve with your products and services.
To address them, you need to become aware of them. How do you do this? By making it a point of duty to find them out.
While some customers will be vocal enough to tell you their pain points, many will only inform you indirectly. To discover these pain points, you need to ask, listen, and observe your clients’ behavior.
Ask them to participate in surveys. Request for responses through email, and offer a reward to those who respond quickly. You can also uncover pain points by reading customer reviews and comments about your service and those of your competitors.
But don’t let this be a one time exercise, invest in systems that allow you to constantly understand how your customers feel.
- Use the Channels Customers Love
Technology has blessed us with multiple ways to communicate with people in the 21st century. You can make a phone call, send an email, chat in real-time, use an AI chatbot, or do a remote video meeting.
You may also use tried and tested methods like sending a handwritten thank you card to appreciate customers. No matter what you do, ensure that you are using the channel that makes them happy.
You can discover the best channel to use by creating ideal buyer personas. Customer personas allow you to easily find the best channel to use based on the personas’ age and preferences.
- Get Regular Customer Feedback
You should receive constant feedback from your customers by creating workflows and procedures for it. One effective way to know how they feel is to automate your marketing and relationship management.
If you own an online store, for instance, you can set up automated mails to interact with your customers at different points in the buyer journey. When a customer views certain product pages without buying anything, let the customer know you noticed the products they viewed. Then ask if they still want to buy or they want alternate products.
If they abandon their shopping cart, send an abandoned cart message to remind them about their uncompleted order.
Similarly, if your customer has stopped buying from you, ask them why they stopped. That way, you will show that you care and you can help them resolve any issues they have with your products or services.
Also, if you are planning to launch a new service, send messages to your customers and encourage them to take a critical look at your proposal. Doing this will enable you to avoid launching a service that will fail in the marketplace.
- Respond Promptly to Customer Complaints and Inquiries
Customers are more likely to buy from you if you respond to inquiries within one or two hours. If you respond too late, they may move over to your competitor.
The best way to provide a rapid response is to have an automated feedback system. For example, you can set up an autoresponder email to show that you have received their inquiry. Then follow it up in an hour or less.
If the person sends a message outside business hours. Send an automated response to inform the customer that you will get back to them immediately after you resume work.
- Offer Personalized Service
Gone are the days when providing a listing of your products and services will suffice for effective marketing. Today, customers are more enlightened. They have access to market information and spend time comparing your service with that of your competitors. So, the best way to entice and keep your customers is to offer them personalized service.
Find out the name and contact details of your customer from the first contact they have with you. Address them by name when you communicate with them. Inquire about their needs and desires, then provide information and attention with empathy. This will make them stay with your business and even become brand advocates for your company.
Paying more attention to your customers is a smart way to generate repeat business at a low cost. Take time to build those relationships and your customers will reward you with patronage and referrals.
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