A company needs to have a good relationship with its customers. This is a given, regardless of the industry or the products or services on offer. There is always going to be some way that a company can build on its current rapport with customers and make things even better. Let’s take a closer look at what you can do.
Establish the Changes Your Customers Want to See
All customers will have some idea about how you can improve your services. Some of these will be very impractical and simply not possible. However, there will always be some that could potentially make a difference to your business. Take a look through some of the suggestions – you might be surprised to find a few good ideas in there. There could even be a product or service that is missing from your current array, allowing you to fill a gap in what you as a company are able to offer.
While not all ideas that your customers will have will be good ones, there is still plenty worth considering. By releasing a product or service that they have asked for, you will hopefully get a seal of approval from them. Finding little ways that you can please them like this is always going to be very popular.
Review Your Brand Stance
If you want to improve your rapport with your customers, you need to make sure that you have a good brand voice to do it with. Nowadays, customers are no stranger to voting with their coins. They want to actively support brands that are able to offer them something for their money beyond products and services. There are so many issues that consumers care about nowadays. From environmental concerns to socio-political issues that make us question many aspects of our society, there are lots of points that consumers will expect a brand to speak out on if they are going to give them their money.
Therefore, you will need to decide whether you as a company will take a stance on these issues. It might not always be accepted as a good thing. There will be someone who is not pleased to see you take a position on these issues. Expect to lose some patronage, just as you might gain it from others.
You also need to make sure that any stances you take aren’t viewed as performative. If you are going to make a commitment to a certain stance or issue, you need to make sure that you are going to be consistently bringing attention to it in a meaningful way. You could raise money for it and have special campaigns focusing on it, but you do need to make sure that you are happy for it to be associated with your brand.
Personalize Marketing
There will be many different types of marketing that you utilize within your business. Are you just sending out generic pieces to everyone? This is not very engaging, and it could result in many of your customers simply ignoring the vast majority of your campaigns. Since so much time and so many resources will have been put into creating these campaigns, you should make sure that they are as appealing as possible to your audience.
For example, you can use data from previous campaigns in your direct mail integrations so you can create some great material to be used in future ones. Many companies focus purely on their digital marketing nowadays, when there are still many merits to be found in traditional materials. By looking for direct mail integrations that can be used to analyze both past, present, and future campaigns, you could find plenty of paths that you can use to ensure that marketing is relevant and personalized regardless of who it is being sent to.
Consumers are more likely to engage with something that could catch their attention, so you should ensure that you are creating the best marketing material alongside your message. Create curated material that you know your audience will want to interact with, and then make sure it is followed up by the best images and CTAs so you can drive as much interest from the marketing campaign as possible.
Be Easy to Contact
There is nothing more frustrating than when a customer wants to get in touch with a brand to bring up some of the issues that they are having, only to be unable to find any way of getting in contact with them. Some brands do this deliberately – hiding contact information deep within their site and having very limited ways of getting in touch with them. As a result, they tend to have a very poor rapport with their customers.
You should make sure that you make it easy for your customers to get in touch with you, but you should also give them plenty of options to pick from so they can go with what is most comfortable for them. For example, you might decide to add a live chat function to your site. It is fairly easy to track down a widget that you can build into your site framework. You can even find AI-powered ones that can guide customers through some automated responses and then pass them over to a real representative if the AI cannot help them with their query. More often than not, however, they should be able to do so!
It can also be a good idea to put a time limit for responses in place. Many customers like to get in touch via email if they have an issue. However, they can get frustrated if they have to wait a long time for a response, and this can cause them to fire off another email – shunting them to the bottom of the pile once more. Set up automated responses to let them know that their email has been received, and then try to ensure that someone gets back to them within two working days maximum.
Keep the Customer in Mind
The relationship between your customers and your brand is one of the most important that you as a business owner can cultivate, so you must make sure that you put your everything into doing so. Building a good rapport with your customers is going to take a lot of time on your part, and you need to make sure that it is done with the utmost honesty and respect at every turn. Show that you are a trustworthy business that is worthy of support. If you are constantly working to prove yourself and deliver the services and products you have promised, you should collect a good reputation for yourself.
Every business needs a good reputation to be able to survive. Take the time to work out what your customers would like to see from you, and work on those areas to attempt to build a good rapport with them. With the right work, you should hopefully be able to create a good rapport with your customers that speaks for itself and the quality of your business, as well as any marketing campaign.
