5 Ways To Make Your Customers Feel The Love

Are you spending more time and resources trying to woo new customers or take care of the customers you already have? We’ve all heard the saying that it’s easier to sell to customers you already have, than to try and find new ones. During tough economic times like these it’s easy to shift into panic mode in a desperate attempt to replace shrinking revenue. But often times the best solution is to harvest your low hanging fruit so to speak. Here are some ideas to deepen loyalty and build customer relationships.

1. Ask them what they think. It’s a simple idea, but when was the last time you asked for honest feedback from your customers? My firm does an annual customer satisfaction survey, and we share the results with our entire staff so everyone is aware of where we’re doing well and where we need to improve. The first year of the survey we calculated our net promoter score to use as a quantitative benchmark, so we would have a metric that could be studied over time.

2. Show symbols of your appreciation. It’s one thing to say “thank you for your business” and quite another to show it with a symbol or gesture. Take them to lunch, send them a hand made birthday card, perhaps even give them a surprise discount off their invoice. Take the time to get to know your customer and show interest in what’s happening in their lives. For one of our clients whose wife had a baby, we created a piggy bank that was personalized with the baby’s name and birth date.

3. Be sure they are in the know. We have a client who is rapidly expanding their product offering but their customers are not aware of their complete offering, despite our client’s best efforts to educate them. A regularly scheduled drip email program is a great way to stay in front of customers by highlighting new products and services that may be of great benefit to their business.

4. Create an advisory board. I’ve implemented this idea at two previous companies I worked for, with great results. We created a group of designers (in one case floral designers, the other case interior designers) who served as a board of experts to educate consumers on trends, create inspirational design vignettes, and provide instruction on the correct use of the company’s products. Your advisory board could be a blend of outside experts like we did, and customers. And the ways to leverage an advisory board are endless in today’s connected, social media world.

5. Give them incentives to buy more. Figure out what would make them want to buy more from you. The easy answer is lowering your price, but obviously that isn’t a sustainable concept. Most B2B customers have complex problems they are trying to solve. Are there ways you can help solve them? Imagine the value you can bring by analyzing your customer’s business, and bringing new ideas to improve efficiency and productivity in their processes.

For more information on how to improve client relationships, or how we build our own in ways you can’t imagine, contact us today.

Flickr photo courtesy of mrtopp