Customer service and customer communication are vital components in any successful business. After all, staying in touch with people who deal with your business builds ongoing relationships and creates loyal customers.
Statistics show that businesses have a 60% to 70% chance of selling their products or services to an existing customer. By comparison, the probability of selling to a new prospect is somewhere between 5% and 20%.
Besides, it costs a business up to 7 times more to acquire a new customer than keeping an existing one happy. When you focus on customer retention through great service and communications, you’re effectively decreasing your business operating costs.
The key to keeping customers happy is to stay connected and keep communications open. Here are some tips for improving customer communications:
Schedule Communications
Maintaining customer relationships can be handled in any manner of ways. For some businesses, it may mean sending out holiday cards or birthday cards. For others, an update or shout-out on social media might suffice.
The regular communications you schedule should be pertinent to your business and your products For example, a realtor might send out an anniversary card on the one-year anniversary of a customer closing on a new home purchase., while a mortgage broker may be justified in making a direct phone call after a month to check that all is progressing smoothly.
Make It Easy For Them
Customers want to know they can always stay in touch with someone from the business, so make it easy for them. Be sure they have your direct office line and your cell number, as well as your email address.
If your business uses social media to engage customers, be sure the links to your business pages are easily accessible. It also helps to ensure your business pages are monitored so you can respond to any queries or comments promptly.
If you or your employees carry work-specific cell phones as well as their own personal phones, consider upgrading to one of the dual-SIM smartphones from Sony. Many employees will switch off a work phone once they’re on personal time, reducing the opportunity for customers to stay in touch. With a dual-sim phone you don’t have to worry about carrying two separate phones around with you, but you can easily distinguish between personal calls and work-related calls from the same device.
Encourage Engagement
Even the happiest customers often don’t think to endorse your company or products after they’ve completed a transaction. However, by inviting them to leave their thoughts or feedback about the service they received, most will happily oblige.
Feedback forms give your company the opportunity to see what customers really love and what aspects of your business might be improved.
Another positive form of engagement is profiling individual customers. Ask one of your happier customers for any tips, advice, or results they achieved by using your products or services. You can use their responses as new content to put onto your business blog and share around your social media pages.
In turn, your customers feel good that you respect them enough to feature them in your business communications. Other people will also recognize that you respect existing customers to treat them in such a manner, which helps to build trust for you and your business.
Building strong customer relationships is the key to creating customer loyalty. Look for ways your business can maintain communications and your customers will stay happy.
We make it easier for our customers to contact us through enabling our messaging options on our social media pages such as Facebook, because not everyone prefers email.
That’s really a great and valid point Sammy. It also socializes and humanizes your organization.