How to Build Long-Lasting Customer Relationships? (A Step-by-Step Guide)

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StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article |Customer Relationships|How to Build Long-Lasting Customer Relationships? (A Step-by-Step Guide)With the advancement of technology, consumer behavior has changed. Today, marketing and winning over customers is not the difficult part. The biggest challenge faced by businesses today is to retain their customers.

With every passing day, numerous competitors are popping up in each industry. Hence, it is very easy for customers to switch to new brands that appeal to them more. In fact, according to InMoment, 50% of customers leave a brand for competitors who stay more relevant and satisfy their specific needs.

With these changes, maintaining customer relationships is what makes a brand stand out from its competitors. Laying a strong foundation of a healthy customer relationship leads to reduced churn and increased profitability for businesses.

In this step-by-step guide, you’ll get a quick overview of how you too can build strong, long-lasting relationships with your customers.

1. Add Value Through Content

The principle of reciprocity is super-important when we talk about building customer relationships. No relationship works one way. If you don’t add any value to your customers, they are not going to associate with your brand.

The best way to add value is by creating high-quality, useful content for your leads and customers. This is the 101 for starting your customer relationships the right way.

You can use the tried and tested content marketing strategies such as blog posts, ebooks, guides, and white papers. Or, you can even take it a step further by using content such as webinars, checklists, templates, videos, social media content, etc.

2. Increase Engagement with Prospects

Engaging your prospects in meaningful interactions is the best way to go about strengthening your relationships with them. Hence, you must prioritize user engagement.

  • Integrate customer service options such as live chat, chatbot with your website and social media platforms. This will lead to many fruitful interactions with your prospects and customers.
  • Ensure that you actively engage with your prospects on social media platforms. You can do this by interacting in the comments section. Or, you may even individually reach out to people who have previously engaged with your posts.
  • Build an email list and send out weekly newsletters through emails. Add clear CTAs in your emails and encourage replies to begin conversations.

3. Track Customer Data

For building and maintaining customer relationships, you need to store and track all your customer data in one place. It is important to track customer data such as contact info, previous interactions, purchase history, etc. Without this, you won’t be able to manage customer relationships in an optimized manner.

The SuperOffice Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool can help you organize all the data related to your customers. SuperOffice CRM will help you:

  • Manage lead and customer information at a commonplace so that your sales team can pull up entire customer history at one go with ease.
  • Track all your customer touchpoints and have a birds-eye view of how many customers are coming through your sales pipeline.
  • Provide omnichannel personalized experience to your customers leading to increased customer satisfaction.
  • Manage your entire pipeline and close more deals.
  • Track all your success metrics using visual dashboards and in-depth reports to help you find any gaps in your pipeline and fix them.

4. Use Loyalty Programs

Customer retention can be much more profitable than customer acquisition for most businesses. In fact, returning customers tend to spend 67% more than new customers.

Using loyalty programs is a brilliant way to make your one-time customers return to you again and again. If this doesn’t strengthen the relationship with your customers, nothing else will!

The way to build a successful loyalty program is to provide attractive incentives that your customers won’t be able to resist. You can offer incentives such as special discounts, redeemable reward points, free feature upgrades, and similar more offers.

5. Gather Feedback and Iterate Based on that

The final and most important step to building strong customer relationships is to gather feedback from customers and keep updating your products or services based on that. If you don’t take this step seriously, you might start seeing increased customer churn rates.

  • Collect customer feedback from every touchpoint. You can use means such as chatbots, live chats, emails, surveys, or in-app messages to gather feedback.
  • You should also look for any customer complaints or feedback on social media platforms. People tend to use social media for providing negative feedback.
  • Track and analyze all the gathered feedback. Come up with improvements or upgrades in your products and services.
  • You can also creep on your competitors and look for any common customer complaints. This will help you to identify any gaps in your competitors’ products. You can update your products to fill in these gaps.

To Conclude

Studies show that a 5% increase in customer retention can lead to 25% to 95% increased profits! And, laying foundations for long-lasting customer relationships is the key to maximizing your customer retention.

Hence, start implementing these steps today and watch your business grow to new heights in 2021.

9 Tips To Improve Your Customer Service

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StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article |Improve Customer Service|9 Tips To Improve Your Customer ServiceEvery business knows the importance of good customer service. However, sometimes procedures can slip, and of course, everyone is only human when it comes to dealing with situations that arise. The scale of business that can be lost due to poor customer service techniques is surprising. Now more than ever, people place companies on a pedestal when choosing where to buy. So, getting this aspect right is essential to get the right balance for your business.

So what does excellent customer service look like? Check out some of the top ways to incorporate typical company characteristics and techniques into your company processes.

1. Become an expert

Nobody likes a know-it-all, but when your company displays knowledge and expertise in a product or service, you can give precise and specific solutions to their issues. If the customer has to go through five different people to have a query resolved, they will not be happy. It’s also essential to have a troubleshooting or FAQ section on your website that can help in the first instance. If a customer can resolve an issue without needing to speak to someone, the more likely they’ll return.

2. Empathy

Companies should not act like robots. People want to talk to someone that understands their issues. To build a strong relationship with consumers, your team needs to be active listeners and establish a common ground.

3. Be personable

As mentioned before, customers want to be able to communicate with a human. Contact details should be clearly available on your website. If possible, integrate an option such as live chat to help people get answers quickly and easily without picking up the phone. This function can also help convert people. Suppose they have any immediate questions about an item. In that case, they’re less likely to leave the site to go and compare the information.

To help make your staff more personable, allow then to incorporate their personality into the customer experience while staying on brand. This is also important for any communication type, such as social media, live chats, and phone conversation. Consumers like to feel the personality of the brand and its staff, so they know they’re not buying from a faceless entity.

4. Clear communication

In short, don’t waffle or hit customers with sales jargon when they have an issue! If they contact customer services, it’s typically because they have questions or queries regarding an order. So don’t avoid the problem, just get straight to it and communicate clearly to resolve issues. If this does not happen, you could risk losing the customer and receive a request for a refund, as the issue was not resolved.

5. Flexible

The saying ‘the customer is always right’ is mostly true. However, this is only possible if your company is flexible. Adapting to different situations is vital for all team members. Unfortunately, some people try their luck when querying or communicating issues. The key to customer service excellence is to remain level-headed and calm. This can be easier said than done. However, investing in good training for your teams will help them tackle different scenarios and put their skills into practice.

6. Open to feedback

No company is perfect. While you may have a good reputation for excellent customer service, there’s always more than can be done to improve it. One of the best ways to ensure improvement is to be receptive to feedback. Of course, you may get the odd discrepancy in negative feedback. Still, constructive criticism is always important to take on board. A good way to collate feedback and reviews is to conduct customer satisfaction surveys. These will highlight areas of improvement and tackle any lingering issues that customers have, however small.

7. Listen to staff

One of the most significant aspects that can help improve customer service is by listening to your staff. They are the people face to face with the consumer and experiencing the issues they face. By collating staff feedback and frustrations they have with delivering good customer service, you can create a plan to implement changes. Staff may have various input from requiring more training on products to having insufficient authority to issue refunds, which hold the process up. Looking at each area and determining what can make the customer experience better will help consumers and staff in the long term.

8. Act on your promises

Getting feedback from customers and staff is all well and good, but what are you going to do about it. A company that says they’ll change and fails to doesn’t hold onto a good reputation for long. Act on your promises and give solutions to issues that are affecting the customer journey. In some cases, it may not be possible to implement changes straight away. Still, it’s also important to communicate this to customers and staff. An announcement such as ‘you told us this, and we’re working towards making it possible’ is a great way to let people know you’re listening but can’t do it straight away. If feedback is ignored, then it shows.

9. Don’t bombard the customer with surveys

While it’s essential to try and get feedback from customers, some companies make the mistake of bombarding customers with surveys about their experience. There are many ways that consumers can give reviews, including incorporating tools to encourage feedback on specific products. Giving customers the option to leave feedback is crucial, and if they say no – don’t push it. One of the best ways to drum up engagement is via social media. People love to suggest brands and let others know about their experiences, so be sure to interact and engage with others on your platforms to encourage tags and mentions in consumer social posts.

These are just some of the ways to improve your overall customer service experience and success rates. By implementing good practices and remaining consistent and on-brand, you will ensure customers get the information they require without confusion and hassle. Does your company cover the above?

6 Ways To Improve Your Customer Service

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StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article |Improve Customer Service|6 Ways To Improve Your Customer ServiceCustomer service has always been an important part of any successful business but in an economy that is struggling due to the Coronavirus pandemic, it has never been more vital to provide a flawless customer experience.

Have the right systems in place

Being available to your customers at the right times and on the right platforms is crucial. Most businesses have call centers and an online presence in the form of live chat, social media listening, and email. If your phone system is outdated then contact some specialist VOIP providers who will be able to advise you.

Learn to listen

Many companies can fall into the trap of just seeing their customers as faceless voices at the end of a phone or email. There is a real person with a real problem on the other side of any conversation.

Train your employees to actively listen rather than just read a script. Interact, engage, and empathize with your customers.

Use the right language

It can be easy to fall into an overly formal standard of language. It is seen as a way of communicating clearly and leaving no room for misinterpretation. It often has many negative effects on your customers. It is difficult to create a level of trust and friendliness, which is not good for your brand. When training your customer service reps, ensure that you create an atmosphere of friendliness and positivity.

Create experts in your customer service team

As a customer, there is nothing more infuriating than talking to someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about or their lack of product knowledge. Even your first line support staff should know your products and services in-depth.

Respond in a timely manner

The time it takes for you to respond to a customer will have a huge impact on overall customer satisfaction. Not just the time it takes to answer the initial call but when responding to a customer’s query. Even if you don’t have a resolution to their issue right now, you should contact them to let them know you are still dealing with their issue.

Analyze customer feedback to improve

Continuous improvement cannot happen if you do not learn from your customer interaction. Rather than conduct a huge survey on an irregular basis, try building feedback into your daily customer service. Using feedback tools at the end of every customer service interaction will give you a real-time view of how you are performing. Changes can be made in a timely manner and improvements observed quickly.

Conclusion

Great customer service comes from really connecting with your customers on a professional and personal level. Customers expect speed, product knowledge, and a swift resolution to their issues. If you are failing to provide all of these, then you are going to start seeing the detrimental effects on your customer base and client retention. Use customer service as a key component in your business strategy.

Listen to your customers and improve your customer service levels accordingly in order to continue to improve.

4 Ways Your Business Premises is Giving Your Customers The Wrong Impression

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StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article |Business Premises|4 Ways Your Business Premises is Giving Your Customers The Wrong Impression Many businesses, especially retailers, have a blended approach to their operations encompassing elements of ecommerce and brick and mortar retail. However, running a business with a physical presence brings with it a certain set of responsibilities. Like your website, your social media presence or your content marketing materials, your physical premises is an extension of your branding. Your customers and visitors will judge it accordingly. And if you plan on growing your business, you can’t afford to take a single first impression for granted. The challenge, then, is to ensure that your physical premises gives your customers or clients the right impression even before they walk through your door.

But that can be easier said than done.

No matter how hard you work to create and maintain an optimal business premises, sometimes even little things can undo everything you’ve worked so hard to build. With that in mind, let’s look at 5 ways in which your business premises can give your customers the wrong impression…

They can’t park

Your customers’ first impression can be formed long before they set foot on-site. If they have to drive around for a long time to find a parking space because your employees have taken up the best ones, this can inject a sour note into their experience that you’ll need to work much harder to erase. Optimizing your parking lot, encouraging car pooling and having clear policies on where employees can and cannot park can all be useful in creating a harmonious customer experience and a great first impression.

It’s not consistently clean or tidy

You know how important it is to keep your space clean. Especially under the current circumstances. But customers don’t just notice the broad strokes. They notice the little details, too. For instance, they’ll notice if there’s one corner that the cleaners have missed that’s dirty and grimy. They’ll notice a bathroom that’s not been cleaned to a satisfactory standard. They’ll notice if an employee’s desk is cluttered or swamped with paperwork. It’s up to you to ensure that cleanliness and tidiness are consistent in your space, and that each employee does their part to ensure a clean, tidy and pleasant workplace. Even if you have cleaning staff.

It’s too hot

It’s a scientific fact. We all hate being too hot. Even if your premises is a little on the cool side, that’s infinitely preferable to being too hot. Being too hot makes us cranky and irritable. It can make small inconveniences seem like big issues. It can escalate conflicts and at the very least make us feel sweaty and unpleasant. So it’s up to you to keep your premises cool. From ensuring that the orifice HVAC system is working to servicing air conditioning units regularly or placing filters over your windows to block excessive heat from the sunlight. There are all kinds of ways in which you can maintain a pleasant temperature.

Your employees seem stressed and irritable

Finally, even if your premises is immaculate, your employees’ actions can make things seem chaotic, poorly managed… or really unfair to them. If your employees look visibly stressed, irritable and on the verge of nervous breakdown that can send a very strong message to your customers. Of course employees have stressful days. But they need to be trained and encouraged to seek out help when they feel out of their depth and to keep stress-induced outbursts out of the eyes and ears of customers.

Improving Customer Satisfaction As An Online Business

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StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article |Customer Satisfaction|Improving Customer Satisfaction As An Online BusinessProviding ultimate customer satisfaction when you have no face to face interaction with your clientele can often seem like a bit of a tricky task. Giving customers the best experience possible involves more than just being respectful in your tone, as every feature of your business, products and services contributes towards the individual opinion of the people you serve. Luckily, finding out exactly how you can improve customer service when operating a business exclusively online doesn’t have to be as difficult as you might initially believe, as there are a few innovative ideas that you can utilise to start making beneficial changes today. So, if you would like to find out more, then read on to uncover some of the best top tips and tricks to make the most of now!

Design Matters

One of the biggest factors that you simply mustn’t skip over is the design of your web store, as this is the first thing that a customer will see upon clicking your link meaning you must take the opportunity to give off an amazing first impression. Focus on creating a design that will work for different people from all walks of life, making accessibility a key feature to ensure that those with impairments and disabilities can just as easily navigate around your site. Utilise white or yellow tones as a background colour and a strong dark black or blue for text, as this will make the words jump out from the screen whilst being extra handy for those with difficulties such as dyslexia too. Picking a colour scheme that matches in with your brand or it’s products and services can be a great way to include a little style, so stick with a couple of shades and use these to highlight and draw attention to important features.

Providing Information

A considerable issue that may be holding you back from achieving your full potential as an online business is the lack of information that you provide to your customers. Simply posting your products or services with a small brief description is not enough to give potential customers faith in your business, and it can give off the feeling that you put just as little effort into the quality of the items you sell, too. Providing as much information as you can about the history of your brand, the origins of your products and materials, your environmental pledge and other key areas will allow customers to get a better understanding of who they are buying from. If you sell your products and services outside of the country, all of this information should be provided in the correct language for local customers to understand your business too – investing in the help of a professional translator such as Para Plus Translations can provide you with everything you need to maintain your quality customer experience all around the world.

Improving customer satisfaction as an online business has never been so simple when you are able to make the most of the top tips and tricks detailed above!