Building a Strong Customer Relationship
June 12, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
Customers are the most important asset of all kinds of business. So building and strengthening relationships means building and strengthening business and sales.
There are many reasons to build a strong relationship with your customers, but two of the reasons remain the key.
One major reason is that customers appreciate and value on good customer service. They want to know for sure that if something ever happened with the product or service, they could rely on you. This is extremely important when your competitors are trying to take them away. Your customer will stick with you as long as you provide excellent customer service. There is no substitute for outstanding customer service. It is even more important than fees to most people.
Besides, development of customer relationships is crucial due to its referral process. Customers who are treated with respect and provided excellent customer service would love to refer their families and friends to you. The stronger the relationship, the more likely the customers will refer to a business.
There are some skills in building up sound customer relationship. The guideline is to treat your customer as human being. The last thing you want is to make your customer feel like a statistic.
First of all, the customers want to be appreciated. So you should take a few minutes to show them that you care about them.
Don’t just greet the customers as they walk in and say goodbye to them as they walk out. Building customer relationship is much more than that. You need to talk to them, strike a non-business conversation with them. Make small talks with them on anything, such as weather, sports, movies, animals, etc. Make them know you in person and feel treated as individual. The more they talk with you, the more you open the door to be opened to other outlets.
For the beginner, you could keep it simply. Just try your best to know your customers by name instead of just addressing them by name. Say things like: “How are you today?” Or: “How was your weekend?” Or “Is there something I can help you today?” Make the presence known and felt.
The effort should be made on a daily base.
Secondly, hold a cell phone rolodex containing a list of all your customers’ birthdays, anniversaries and other special occasions. Keep your eyes and ears open to customers when they talk about upcoming events in their lives.
Remember to send your customer a card appropriate date approaches. It will be greatly appreciated.