How to properly establish a relationship with your customers
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Building positive relationships and even friendships with your customers is one of the best things you can do as a business owner; until you have a good relationship with your customers they will never feel especially loyal to your business nor will they feel pride when shopping with you.
Fortunately, establishing relationships with your customers doesn’t have to be as difficult as you might think it does. You can very easily build relationships with them by following the guidance given here in this post. Here is everything you need to know:
Reviewing customers
As a business owner it is your responsibility to review your customer’s financial behaviour in order to rule out fraud, deception or theft. Accepting funds gained through fraud can get you into trouble which is why it is your duty to make sure your business’s customers are not criminals. The process of reviewing them is called Customer Due Diligence or CDD. It is a relatively simple process which can be made even simpler by hiring an agency to do it for you or consult you on it. Reviewing customers is not going to help you build relationships with them but it will prevent you from dealing with criminals.
Verifying that your customers are not criminals can be very good for you and your business; nobody wants to deal with fraudsters. The knowledge that your customers are all acting within the law, using funds to make purchases that they have earned legally will make you a more confident business owner. It should be noted however that in addition to reviewing customers you also need to make sure that the people following you online are genuine people and not bots, but this is something that will be discussed in more detail in the next section.
Social media
You need to open a social media account for your business. Social media can be a great place to attract people’s interest and teach them about what your business offers. At the same time social media can be an effective tool for communicating with your customers. The good thing about social media is that most platforms allow customers to message you directly, making relationship-building significantly easier; all your customers have to do is send you a message to start a conversation.
You can easily gauge customer engagement by looking at your social media page(s). By looking at how many people follow, message and interact with you, you can get an idea of how popular your business is and what people think of it. Bear in mind there are bots all over social media; fortunately it is quite easy to spot and avoid bots. If you notice that you are being followed by a large number of them then it is your responsibility to report their accounts to the platform you are using and remove them from your page. An abundance of bots can make your business look unprofessional.
Direct interactions
Direct interactions with customers can be a good way of building personal relationships with them. Fostering personal bonds and relationships is not easily done. Direct interactions are only really possible if you run a brick-and-mortar business, however. If you do then make sure that you are polite, friendly and personable to every single customer that comes in whether they buy something from you or not. Having a positive attitude to customers can be a good way of ensuring they come back again. Business owners who are rude to customers push them away and make them want to not return.
Even when customers are being rude to you, it is your responsibility to be polite and maintain a positive attitude. Drifting into anger or rage will only push them away further. When a customer is annoyed with you maintaining a good attitude can make your business seem a lot more professional. When the customer’s dispute or problem is resolved they will be more likely to return. If you just fly into a rage then even when issues are resolved customers will not want to come back and do business with you or your store again in the future.
Mailing lists
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Signing customers up for mailing lists can be another good way of getting them engaged and interested. It does need to be noted that you cannot just sign people up for your mailing list; you need their permission first. Signing people up for your store’s mailing list without obtaining their permission is a criminal offence in some countries. Such behaviour can lead to your business receiving fines or being punished by regulatory bodies. Building a mailing list is something that should be done organically. Obtaining people’s permission to put them on your mailing list is not as hard as you might think it is.
A very effective way of getting people to sign up for your store’s mailing list is by offering them vouchers and discounts. Consumers love when they are given discount codes. You do not have to offer them discounts of much. Discounts of around 5-10% are usually sufficient enough to get them to sign up for your store’s mailing list. Bear in mind that when you are offering discounts in exchange for sign-ups, you should simultaneously give people the option to opt out; if you do not allow them to opt out then they could end up remaining subscribed to your list even when they do not want to. Make sure that when you are sending people discount codes that they can only be used once. Discount code abuse is a big problem for many business owners.
Customer support
Focus on optimising and improving your organisation’s customer support department. Without good customer support your company can never achieve success. A good way of improving customer support is by outsourcing it to a third-party service or by using automation software. Automation software can help to improve the function of your customer support department. It can also be an effective way of answering customer queries and concerns immediately. The faster you respond to customer queries, the more pleasant each customer’s experience will be reaching out to you and your service desk.
Running a business has never been easier. Technology has made building positive relationships with customers extremely simple. All you need to do is follow this post’s guidance and you will be able to build positive relationships with your customer.; having a positive relationship with your customers will make them more loyal and earn you a lot of money.