Building Long Term Relationships with Customers and Clients
Instead of working so hard to land new clients, more business owners should work on the clients they already have. Their repeat business should be the lifeblood of your company, and if they’re happy, they’ll refer new customers to you. Fail to plan to maintain your relationships with customers and clients, and you could eventually lose them and have to spend more of your budget on client acquisition. Here are a few tips on how to build long lasting relationships with customers and clients.
Engage with Them
Long-term customers have different expectations and needs than new clients. Understand what they want, and give them content on your website and social media posts that is relevant to them. Understand their relationship with the brand, and try to present the content and landing page layout that fits their expectations. Use software to personalize interactions with customers so that they feel like they have a one-on-one relationship with them. Don’t let customers feel like they are just a number.
Create a Brand Experience
While we’ve been shifting to chatbots, AI and social media posts, nothing replaces the emotional depth of interacting with the company in person. Give customers a way to try your products live. Provide ways they can contact an agent when they have problems or questions.
Design your customer service processes so that customers receive a consistent experience no matter what channel they use to reach out to the company. Ensure that they receive friendly, attentive service, whether disputing a bill or seeking technical support. Implementing tools that capture the history of all interactions that customers have with the company allows representatives to draw from that information when dealing with the customer. Then they can personalize the conversation and avoid making the customer repeat themselves.
Keep Lines of Communication Open
Keep clients up to date on the status of their project. Give them a clear line of communication for reporting problems, sharing concerns or getting an update. Let them know about issues you encounter as well as what is going right. Always be honest. If you’re vague or over-promise to clients, they’ll lose their trust, and eventually, their business.
At the same time, you should set up background processes so that you aren’t driving away existing clients by making them feel like they aren’t trusted. You could use solutions like Deluxe checks to fight check fraud and gain identity theft protection. Then your business is protected against fraud without putting so many hurdles in front of clients that they choose to take their business elsewhere. Be open when there are issues with their account so that you can work with them to find a solution.
Mine Social Media so You Can Be Proactive
Mine social media for mentions of the brand and their context. Capture customer complaints so that you can reach out to them, instead of letting their social media tirades turn into negative press for your brand. Learn what customers are saying online, so that you can learn what problems they are having and present a solution before it becomes worse. Use the right tools, and you can learn why customers aren’t returning to your brand. Then you can correct these issues so you can stem the losses.
A business can only be successful when it serves its clients and customers well. The key to true success is building long-term relationships with clients. You’ll keep them coming back for more, bringing new business along with them.
