5 Strategies That Make Every Customer Feel Like a Valued Customer
If you would classify your customers as merely satisfied - your business is in trouble.
Every customer should feel special, understood, valued, and above all: they should feel like they're your only customer.
It's more likely that your customer will be a repeat one if you treat each and every one this way. After all, the chance of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%, compared with only 5-20% for a new lead.
Your customers are the bread and butter of your business. Make sure you nurture every customer who walks through your door so they feel like a valued customer. This is a surefire way to keep these customers coming back time and time again.
Here are 5 strategies that will ensure every one of your customers feels valued and appreciated.
1) Engage to Make Them Feel Like a Valued Customer
There's nothing worse than trying to reach a company and having to wait days (or even longer) to get an answer to your questions.
I get it. You're busy. But your customers are the livelihood of your business. So this isn't something you can ignore or put off.
Whether you're an entrepreneur with zero staff or a large-sized corporation with hundred of employees - you can respond to your client's inquiries in a timely manner.
Great Ways to Engage With Your Customers to Make Them Feel Valued:
- Respond to comments on your blog
- Participate in conversations on social media
- Retweet their tweets
- Engage them in conversations and keep it going
Of course, boundaries in the way of business hours are necessary. But if you want to blow your competition out of the water, respond to requests, inquiries, and questions promptly.
Most companies take 24-48 hours to reply to emails from their customers. So if you want a leg up on your competition, make a point to respond to those emails on a daily basis. Even as an entrepreneur you can hire an affordable virtual assistant to do this for you.
The bottom line: You must humanize your brand. This means putting your face out there and engaging in every way possible!
Engagement is utterly essential in any successful business.
2) Gain and Build Their Trust
Building the confidence of your customers is the single most important aspect of creating a valued customer.
Let me ask you something. If you had a choice to purchase a new car from a salesman who you don't know, or a salesman who's taken the time to get to know you and build your trust - who would you go for? Exactly.
Trust is everything.
65% of a business's profits come from existing customers. Why? Because these customers believe in and trust the products and/or services these companies offer. It really is as simple as that.
I'm sure their marketing strategies and other factors assist in finding and retaining customers as well. But it always comes down to the trust factor with customers and people in general.
3) Make a Point to Understand Them
Gone are the days that satisfactory customer service, or customer service at all, will assure your business will flourish.
These days, we engage with our prospects and customers on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and other social media platforms.
Simply delivering on quality products and providing ''satisfactory'' service is not enough in the oversaturated world of business we now live in.
When you have a valued customer you have so many possibilities when it comes to any business, in any niche. So it's critical to the very survival of your company that you take the time to understand your customers.
Why is it Crucial to Know Your Customers Anyway?
- Knowing them can help create better products
- Know what they want before they do
- Free market research
- Earn more money
You can take a direct approach and ask your customers what they want. Or you can perform market research in the background, where no one is the wiser. Either way, you have the opportunity to get inside their head and understand them better.
Either way, you have the opportunity to get inside their head and understand them better. This is open so many doors for you, future products/services you offer and will increase your bottom line.
4) Humanize Your Brand
We touched on humanizing your brand, but you may not realize why it's vital to prosper as a business.
A valued customer is a human, just like you. And most would rather purchase a product or service from an actual face than a potentially sketchy company with no human connection or familiar faces.
Oozing your personality into your business will have immense benefits.
Let's not throw professionality out the window or anything drastic, but letting your personality shine will help humanize your brand.
What's The Main Ways to Humanize Your Brand:
- Focus on relationships
- Dazzle them with your personality
- Be yourself and be authentic
- Show your behind the screens shots
5) Thank Them, Time and Time Again
This may seem simple and obvious, but you may be surprised how many businesses don't thank their customers.
And even businesses with the best intentions may not realize all of the opportunities there are to thank your their customers. It goes without saying that this should come from the heart and always be genuine though.
Ways to Thank Your Customers:
- On the invoice or contract
- In an automatic email
- A written note
- A follow-up phone call
We as humans adore praise. A simple compliment or ''thank you'' can make all the difference
This is just another way to ensure you're creating a trusting relationship with your valued customer. Not only that, but you're actually making more money by thanking customers. Who knew!
Final Thoughts
Keeping your customers happy is not a negotiable part of running a business. A valued customer is the core of your business. Without your customers, you don't have a business.
So nurture every single one of them to best of your abilities.
It's not even about customer service anymore. It's about building relationships, trust, engagement, and making a point to understand them as people. Not a sale.
If you have any questions about our services and how we can help you market your business with our pens, please feel free to contact us.