Developing positive relationships with your customers is crucial to your long-term success and profitability.
Here are 9 ideas to that you can use to help you with your customer relations. Use one or more as they are presented here or build on the idea and make them unique.
Ideas for staying connected to your customers
Auto-responders. It's important to communicate automatically and frequently. Once you have a customer's e-mail address, you need to communicate with him or her frequently. You want to be able to follow your leads and convert more of the visitors to your site into customers.
When you use auto-responders, you can personalize the messages that you send to customers. This can be accomplished in both the subject line and in the content of the e-mail that you're sending.
Newsletters. Newsletters are a great way to communicate with your customers since there are an endless number of pieces of information that you can put into the newsletter.
Remember to provide information that is relevant and factual. Studies show that when companies send out newsletters that contain nothing more than sales pitches for the products or services that they are selling, customers tune out these sales pitches and discard the newsletter.
When this scenario occurs, you have no chance of developing a positive relationship with your customer.
Postcards. If you have a budget that allows it, consider sending out postcards to reach your customers to communicate with them on a personal level.
Don't target all the suspects, prospects, customers, and advocates in your database since that type of a marketing program would take too much money, time, and effort, yielding little results. Instead, choose one type of customer segment on which you want to focus, such as parents of small children, and focus your marketing there.
Postcards are a cost-effective way to send useful information to a select group of customers. Consider joint mailings with other postcards to minimize costs.
Fulfill all your promises. It's important that you do what you say you're going to do. This means honoring all special offers and bonuses that you promise. When you or your products fail to deliver on their promises, you lose credibility, which is crucial to establishing a trusting relationship with your customers.
Return all e-mail and phone calls.
When a customer makes an effort to contact you, make sure that you return the communication as soon as you can. This is the perfect opportunity for you to open up lines of communication. Follow the three basic rules when drafting e-mails to customers:
1. professionalism (by using proper e-mail language, your company will convey a professional image),
2. Efficiency (e-mails that get to the point are much more effective than poorly worded e-mails), and
3. Protection from liability (employee awareness of e-mail risks will protect your company from costly lawsuits). Draft a corporate e-mail policy, that addresses e-mail etiquette. If the customer is contacting you with a complaint, take the time to address the concerns and then attempt to rectify the situation.
Once again, this is the perfect way for you gain the trust and confidence of your customers by being responsive to their needs and always using proper e-mail etiquette with less-than-satisfied customers.
Thank-you letters. Make sure that you send out thank you letters for each sale that you generate. It's important to let your customers know that you appreciate their business.
Birthday cards. Since you most likely have collected birth date information from your customers, a nice gesture is to send out birthday cards. This is just a small reminder to them that you are still out there.
Buying reminders. Send out subtle reminders to your customers, and let them know that they may want to think about reordering or placing a new order.
Business anniversary cards. For those of your customers who are making purchases for their business, find out when the opening date of the business was and send out an anniversary card.
Information about new products. Whenever you have a new product or service, make sure that you let your customers know.
The more communication that you have with your customers, the stronger your relationship will be. You want to ensure that your customers trust you, listen to what you have to say, and return to buy more of your products and services.
Action Steps For Positive Customer Relationships
1. When you use auto-responders, you can personalize the messages that you send to customers.
2. Consider sending out postcards to reach your customers to communicate with them on a personal level.
3. When a customer makes an effort to contact you, make sure that you return the communication as soon as you can.
4. If the customer is contacting you with a complaint, take the time to address the concerns and then attempt to rectify the situation.
Important Points About Positive Customer Relationships
- It's important to communicate automatically and frequently.
- When you or your products fail to deliver on their promises, you lose credibility, which is crucial to establishing a trusting relationship with your customers.
- You should follow the rules of e-mail etiquette.
- The more communication that you have with your customers, the stronger your relationship will be.
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