There are loads of business relationships to which you need to pay close attention. There’s the relationship between you and the suppliers, as well as the relationships between you and your employees. But the most important relationship is the one between you and your customers – and it’s one that you need to put a lot of focus on if you want to get more customers.
The better you treat your customers, the stronger the word-of-mouth is going to be about your business. This is an essential element to any marketing campaign. Here are some of the things you need to consider.
Turning users into customers
Of course, it can be difficult to treat customers correctly if the people visiting your website aren’t actually ‘converting’ into customers! If you develop great ways of maintaining these relationships, then you can advertise the great response to these measures and include relevant information on your homepage, which will help with conversion. You may want to take a look at 5 conversion optimisation tips in an article that goes a little more in-depth into conversion rate optimisation than this article does!
Improve contact
Great relationships require great communication, so this is something you definitely need to focus on for your business. A lot of businesses seem to put up quite a lot of walls in this area, making the process more complex than it needs to be. If a problem does occur – and chances are a problem will occur at some point! – then ensuring customers have no difficulty contacting you about the problem, be it over the phone, email, instant messaging, or even social media, will make working towards a solution much easier. This will make it easier for you to uphold your strong reputation even when things go wrong.
Reward loyalty
It’s been estimated that repeat customers are much more likely to spend more (or make bigger single purchases) than brand new customers – so you need to find a way to make sure the users that become customers then become repeat customers! Loyalty programs can be the best way to accomplish this; it shows your company’s appreciation for a customer’s business. They’re one of the best ways to capitalize on positive experiences and create more positive experiences. A really good loyalty program can land you loads of exposure. Take a look at the best and worst loyalty programs, so you know what to aim for and what to avoid!
Listen to feedback
Pretty much every business will have inspired either positive or negative thoughts in a customer. It’s important that you find out about those thoughts, even – in fact, especially – the negative ones. Make sure you encourage users to share their feedback with you. You shouldn’t harass them about it – if you keep sending them emails asking you to rate them on TrustPilot, for example, they might just leave a negative review to punish you for ‘spamming’ them! There are right and wrong ways of asking for feedback, but it’s essential that you get it. If you do get bad reviews, don’t despair – use that information to improve your business.
