If you never hear from your customers, don’t assume that they’re happy. Try to be proactive, talk to them, customers like being supported by suppliers who are constantly looking at ways to improve.
Social media can sometimes make us feel as if we’re over-communicating but to feel properly valued it’s the individual touch that clients need.
Make it personal – send individual emails
Pick up the phone – talking is always good and really helps to build relationships
Ask for opinions – customer surveys are one way to get feedback but avoid online surveys and don’t even think about the “please stay on the line to complete our survey” routine. Clients will value being properly consulted.
Listen – act on the feedback and use client opinion to shape up your services
Do something rather than nothing!
Businesses spend a lot of time, money and effort focussed on new business offering all sorts of incentives to attract new customers. Ideally just as much effort should be put into keeping clients. If you don’t have a client retention strategy in place then you are working on a ‘no news is good news’ policy. Get the right CRM and work it!!
A client’s perception of you will be measured in different ways. Even if you consider that the relationship is largely transactional, from the client’s point of view it could be so much more if you make the first move to make it more relationship based. The value for both of you will increase dramatically – there will be the ‘feel good’ factor about it, lines of communication will be more open and you may well gain more business or referred business as a result. How a client measures you will change – make that first step, it is so much easier than you think.
