7 Practical Ways to Build a Good Relationship with Your Customers

The importance of building a good relationship with your customers can simply be described with these words “no customer, no business” because indeed, without the customers patronage there will be no functional business or company.

Customer retention should undoubtedly be a priority in every business organization and the major way of achieving this is through the provision of quality services (products) and the maintenance of an awesome relationship with customers.

With the level of competition in the business world of this present age, it is crucial that every business owner fights hard to retain his or her customer regardless of the age of the business organization because your loss of customer is your competitors gain.

Luckily, I have been able to put up some strategies which will help you gain more competitive advantage by building a good functioning relationship with your customer apart from your quality service.

Here they are:

1. Get To Know Your Customer

How will you be able to build a good relationship with your one-time customer if you don’t even know him or her? First of all, in order to build a good relationship, you have to know few things about your customer. The first thing to know about a customer is obviously his or her name.

Your customer is likely going to feel good when he or she is addressed by name other than the usual “my customer” which you call everyone that patronizes you. By knowing their names, it gives them the impression that you value them.

When you get to know their names, next thing to know is their marital status. If your customer is married, do well to ask after their husband and wife and sending greetings to them. These gesture also shows that you value and care about them too.

2. Be Memorable Of Their Identities and Regular Request

If your customer makes request for one product often, it is very essential that you take note of that particular customer and his or her regular request. When you are conversant of your customers regular request, when next him or her pays a visit, be the first to ask this “Sir/Madam should I bring your regular?”

If the customer wants something different, then you can proceed further by processing his or her request. If you keep doing this for some time, the customer will be aware of the fact that you know what his or her regular request is and a time will come when he or she will just work in and instead of pulling out a long list of items, he/she will only say two words “my regular” and all will be done.

3. Offer Freebies

Issuing freebies is also another way of attracting customers to your business. It is also a symbol of care and indirect way of soliciting for your customers’ continuous support. I wrote an article on how to attract customers with freebies but it seems you can also build a good relationship through it also.

See the article here

4. Focus on Customer Complaints

Customer complaints and negative feedback provide your business the opportunity to hear what your customers have to say about your product or service. Rather than thinking only of the downsides of complaints and negative feedback, you should regard them as a way to improve your service.

You are being offered the opportunity of redeeming yourself and also a chance to prevent such reviews from circulating about you any further, provided you deal with the existing complaints properly. You don’t want your customers to keep their complaints inside and blurt them out to others. Instead, businesses want the chance to be able to fix their mistakes and complaints are the best way to go about it.

Also, when you resolve complaints, your customers will appreciate it and it will tell you what not to do so you don’t disappoint your customers again.

5. Do Not Issue Preferential Treatment

This is a very serious yet unnoticeable mistake which business owners especially marketers do make. Favouring one customer over the other is an indirect way of saying “we don’t care about you”. If there are many customers in your business center at the same time, make sure to process their request in the order in which they came “First come first serve”.

In no account should you single out one of them who came late compared to others to attain to while others are still in the queue. A good way of managing this situation is engaging your customer while they wait for their turn. This can be achieved by placing a television somewhere in your shop with enough seats for them to sit on.

6. Connect With Your Customers Regularly

Thanks to technology. Connecting to customers is no longer a big issue. This can be achieved through social media like facebook, twitter, whatsapp etc. Another professional way is by newsletter through their email addresses.

Phone calls and bulk messages can also suffice. With these media, you will be able to keep them updated on products, prices and technical support.

Read More: 6 Tips to grow your business using social media

7. Respond Promptly

When a client emails you, acknowledge the receipt of the email as quickly as possible, even if you do not have the answer they are looking for. You will give them comfort by simply acknowledging the receipt of their request and by communicating that you’re on it.

This may seem like a no-brainer, but I often see relationship managers worry about having the right answer, and as a result, they forget to acknowledge that they are on the case. Quick response to mails can be achieved through autoresponders.

Don’t just read and pass, take action too because losing a customer is, without a doubt, the worst thing that can happen to a business.

Sure, this has stayed true for every business of any age, but it holds even more importance these days because you are fighting your competitors for every single naira your customer sets aside for purchase and service request.

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