As a business owner, building a thriving relationship with customers is essential to business success. A good customer relationship not only helps in customer retention, but it can also drive sales just like any other marketing strategy.
Dealing with customers every day gives you the advantage to connect with them and build long-lasting relationships. Need tips on how to go about building relationships and engaging your customers? Continue reading below.
7 Ways To Build Thriving Relationships and Engage With Your Customers
– 1. Streamline and Personalise Communication: Good and effective communication is the bedrock of any relationship. Therefore, if you want to build relationships and engage with your customers, you need to improve and streamline your engagements to be as effective and efficient as possible.
Instead of just engaging in buying and selling, strive to have meaningful communication with your customers. The right way of doing this is by specially treating each customer as a vital part of your business. Always find out what they need and provide solutions to their problems.
Teach your staff how to effectively communicate with clients to keep them coming back for more. Ensure that your teams do all the necessary follow-ups on inquiries, emails, and returning voice mails.
You can also invest in a specially tailored message such as ringless voicemails and text blast. Tailored messages are straight to point, very efficient, affordable, and personalized. For more information on how to successfully launch a ringless voicemail campaign, watch the video below:
Several companies are offering ringless voicemails and mass text messaging services, such as Drop Cowboy. With the help of these services, you can personalize your communication and engage your customers in a non-interruptive way.
– 2. Use Social Media To Your Advantage: It is the digital age, and almost everyone is on one social media app or the other. As a result, social media has emerged as one of the most important platforms to engage and build relationships with customers. If you ever hope to engage customers on a broad level, then you will need to tap into the advantages of social media.
You can build engagements on social media via social media posts, challenges, giveaways, etc. Always look out for social media mentions; this will help you monitor people’s perception of your brand and give room for improvement.
Social media tools like Mention can deliver notifications to you whenever your brand is mentioned anywhere on social media. That way, you can always jump into conversations, engage prospective clients, and manage complaints before they turn into full-blown crises.
Utilizing your website and email messaging on social media is another way to engage your customers and build relationships. Make your business website and email messaging as engaging as possible. Add a blog to your site to promote engagements and give room for feedback. You can also add a chatbox to your website to enable instant messaging and automate your email newsletter.
Another way of building a connection on social media is by creating content that resonates with your audience. Please make use of content that shows that they matter. Try to respond to customers’ comments, requests, and questions as quickly and friendly as possible; this indicates that you value them and go a long way in creating long-term relationships.
Besides, building a good relationship with customers that have a large following can pay off in the long run, especially if they develop the habit of tagging or mentioning your business page. When used appropriately, social media not only become a way to promote sales, but also a means of creating long-lasting relationships for your brand.
– 3. Create An Unforgettable Experience: Make every contact with your customers memorable and unforgettable. Part of this process is making sure your product and services are top-notch. In other words, impress your customers, and you make them loyal to your brand.
You should always ask yourself apart from the product and services rendered, what else can you offer your customers? Research says that about 80% of customers said their experience with a particular brand informed their decision on whether to keep coming back or not.
Try to organize, meet-and-greet, fairs, or anything that will allow you to meet and interact with your customers physically. Physical interaction can create a stronger bond for existing customers and might also convince those who have any doubts about your products and services.
Another way you can provide exceptional experience is by providing all necessary support to your customers at every point of contact. Also, teach your staff and the customer care unit to always perform beyond expectations.
Furthermore, the marketing team can also use the data gained from customer service interaction to create content that can improve engagement and build your relationship with your customers.
– 4. Invest In Loyalty/Reward Programs: Loyalty programs are one of the best ways to appreciate your customers and show them you value their relationship with you. However, before putting a loyalty program in place, you need to ensure they are effective in engaging customers, building relationships, and promoting the business.
If your loyalty programs are too hard to win, the chances are that there won’t be significant conversions. Hence, offer loyalty programs that your customers will be interested are also realistic enough for them to win. The ultimate goal is to engage your customers and increase conversion and sales rates.
There are several loyalty programs that you can invest in, such as special discounts and offers, exclusive holidays for customers who hit a particular target, limited time offers, free coupons, etc. You can also introduce a tiered level program where each member earns rewards according to their level and points in the program.
Another way of rewarding your customers is by organizing contests and competitions that will engage people and create awareness for your brand. Social media apps are one of the best platforms to run this type of game. You can create a hashtag to create awareness, and the more you gather, the more engagements you pull.
Whichever loyalty program you decide to choose, make sure you are creative with your loyalty programs and that they are as engaging as possible.
– 5. Take feedback seriously: Learn to take feedbacks and respond appropriately, irrespective of who they are coming from or whether they are positive or negative. Don’t only welcome feedback, but also encourage your customers to give them.
Making room for feedback not only shows your customers that you value their opinion and care, but it also allows you to identify your customer needs and provide solutions to them.
To encourage feedback, you can conduct surveys, add a comment box on your social media pages and website or place a comment card at the reception.
An essential part of feedbacks is addressing or replying to them. It is one thing not to ask for feedback, but it is worse if you ask for, and then you don’t address them. Always try to understand complaints before replying, and when you respond, explain in a way not to hurt the feelings of the people who gave the feedback.
The need to focus on just the negative feedback can be overwhelming. So, try to address the positive feedback too, if not for anything, it shows you are doing something right, and some of your customers noticed it.
– 6. Special Treatment: Treating each customer specially creates a bond between the brand and your customers. You can show your customers how special they are to your brand by giving them gift cards, remembering their birthdays, and randomly gift them low cost branded items such as t-shirts, notepads, keyholders, pen, etc.
It is easy to see your customers as just a means of making more money. However, if you want to build a relationship with them, you need to care about their needs genuinely.
Always view your customers as individuals like yourself, this can help you relate with them better, but if you are not a people person, then it is advisable to hire someone to do the job.
The fact is that being friendly and personal can help connect your customers to your brand beyond the professional level. Follow up on their concerns genuinely and provide support as much you can- this might be difficult, especially if you have a big brand.
To help manage your relations better, create a database where you store specific information of your customers such as names, purchase history, etc.
– 7. Make Use of User Generated Content: One of the easiest ways to engage and build a relationship with your customers is by embracing user-generated content. At the same time, it also shows your customers that you value them.
Embracing user-generated content is a way of including the views and ideas of your followers and customers in building your brand. For instance, user-generated photos are more likely to have more conversions than company generated ones; this is because the user-generated content has more social proof.
You can also ask for your customers’ opinions on what to do next or do a survey before introducing a new product or service. Doing this can give you considerable insight into what people want and what will sell, and because your customers feel like they played a part in the process, they will be more committed to your company/brand.
Note: It is important to always give credit when using users generated content.
Conclusion
The need to develop more robust engagements and relationships with customers is increasingly higher in the digital age. More than ever, customers are willing to connect on a more personal level, share ideas, and voice their opinions.
Customer relationships and engagements have their advantages and disadvantages, and the best way to manage them and get the best out is to learn how to build solid relationships that are beneficial to your brand. The tips listed above help you cultivate these relationships and streamline them towards the growth and success of your business.
