Your customers are your most vital asset. You shouldn’t take them for granted. If you don’t treat them right and continue to provide value to them they will leave. How you engage with them on a daily basis can either strengthen or weaken this customer-business bond, and thus has the potential to either make or break your business.
Is your business warm and personal or is it cold and unreachable?
If it is already difficult for your customers to even reach you then you are not off to a good start. When a company makes themselves difficult to reach it already makes a customer feel unwanted.
A lack of a social media page can make a company seem cold and distant, and it can also make you seem untrustworthy in this day and age. Websites have a carefully curated feel but a social media page can feel more like an open dialog where anyone can voice opinion, question, or praise through comments and reviews. Having this medium available to your customers makes your business approachable and open.
Slow response – or worse, no response – to email, messages, phone calls, etc is a huge red flag to customers. It signals you either don’t care, can’t help, or don’t want to tell the answer to their question. It can make someone afraid to do business with you, or just plain angry. Neither are good outcomes. Make sure to stay on top of any communications your customers send your way.
Respond not only to praise/testimonials but to complaints as well – be nice to them always and try to help resolve any issues they had. Even if that customer may not come back or be satisfied it’s important that other customers who see the post/review see that you tried to help them to the best of your ability. That will give them the confidence that you will make the effort to do the same for them if the need arises.
Do you treat them as people or as potential sales?
Everyone knows a business is there to make money. That isn’t something you are trying to hide but customers also look for companies that genuinely look out for them too. They come to you for products or services that serve them in some way, and when you present your products and services you’ll have better success if you think about what your CUSTOMER needs instead of just thinking about what you WANT TO SELL THEM. When you can solve the needs of a customer they are more likely to actually do business with you.
People can usually sense inauthenticity and will run at the first detection of it. This is why people will hang up on telemarketers, close doors in the face of door to door salesmen, and totally ignore people selling services and goods from sales tables set up in stores and malls. No one wants their time wasted being pitched something they aren’t remotely interested in, nor do they want to feel like someone is trying to rip them off or just score a commission. High pressure sales tactics can really push customers away, and sometimes scare them from ever coming back. People want to feel like people, and not walking dollar bills.
Do you build lasting relationships with your customers?
If you treat your customers right they stick around. Just like any relationship, it takes work. It is good for everyone involved. Good for the customer, and good for your business. The customer has continued good experiences and has their needs fulfilled, and you get their continued business for years to come.
This is the root of traditional business and economics. People like to have a person or business that is their “go to” for things they need, and they take ownership of it as such: “my grocery store”, “my bookstore”, “my printer”, etc. When you are that person’s “My” you get their business more frequently, but it takes good service/product, good customer-business interaction/communication, and continual effort to build that relationship.
It is well worth the work.
So… ENGAGE. Engage your customers. Be personal, treat them right, and build those relationships to grow your customer base and grow your business. Neglect engaging your customers and soon enough they won’t be your customers any longer.
– Nathan Kendrick
Also Posted: http://printusa.com/index.php/2020/01/31/how-to-create-positive-customer-engagement/
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