Your product might be incredible, your website impeccable, but if you can’t find a customer then your business isn’t viable. The single most important part of any business is the customers. Whether you’re a family-owned corner shop, or a massive multi-national, your customers are what puts food on the table. It’s absolutely important that you keep them happy and loyal to your business, but this can be tricky, even if your business is great! We’ve pulled together some tips on how to do this, that any business can take on board, whatever your budget.
Treat Everyone As Equals
Many companies fall into the trap of only offering the best deals to new customers, whilst this is an effective way of boosting your customer base, it can alienate existing clients. The online gaming sector is a particular proponent of this approach, so much so that sites like www.casinos.co.za have sprung up, helping new gaming customers find the best deal for them. Although every gaming site recommended there has a sign-up bonus for new customers, only a few have recommended VIP schemes. The ones that have both sign-up incentives and loyalty schemes will be the ones that appeal to customers looking to stay and play for an extended time. It should go without saying that these are exactly the sort of customers that most businesses want to attract, loyal ones. Though these exact kind of deals might not work for your company, there will be some sort of deal that will. If you offer a service, consider offering new clients a free consultation and existing clients a discount on your services as a thanks for their loyalty. If you offer goods then free gifts or a percentage sale to your loyal customers are both good starting points.
Customer Service is Top Priority
In our age of ever-increasing reliability on the internet, the idea of speaking to a real person is more and more important for some customers. Whilst FAQs and click through flow charts will help some customers to find the answers that they’re looking for, others could benefit from a more personal touch. Whether your business is big or small, not all of us can be around 24 hours a day to answer the queries of our customers, but there is a simpler way. A real human is an expensive means of delivering excellent customer service and whilst it can’t be argued that they’re the best, they might not be the best per penny spent. When chatbots were introduced, they were initially met with little enthusiasm. They were rigid, unable to answer questions that they hadn’t been programmed for and felt very little like a human. Nowadays the technology has improved massively and many companies will find that a chatbot can achieve great customer satisfaction for them, at a fraction of the price that a team of customer service employees could. Here at epodcastnetwork.com we’ve written a whole section on chatbots for B2C businesses, which should be of interest to anyone thinking about introducing this to their own business’ website.
Complaints Over Compliments
Whilst it’s wonderful to receive a compliment from your customers and we should all be focusing on those making those 5-star reviews as visible and frequent as possible, it’s not always the most helpful form of feedback. Being told that we’re great at something makes us feel good, helps us to continue doing that thing, but rarely does it help us actively improve. Part of keeping your customers happy is listening to their complaints. Instead of asking customers to complain, sending out a feedback form is a good way of seeing what you’re doing well and what you could improve upon. There are lots of sites that offer templates for feedback forms, including www.jotform.com, which provides them for free. Send these forms out to your customers very infrequently, so as not to spam them, and take the feedback seriously. Anything below a perfect score means that there’s some way that you can improve, this kind of feedback is so valuable, so pay attention to it. Once you’ve addressed the issues, make sure you send a newsletter out to your customers letting them know that their feedback was heard and acted upon.Â
