In this current challenging environment, managing the customers that you already have is the key to stability.
Winning new customers when you can’t easily go out and meet people, is challenging to say the least! It also almost always costs you money as well, whether that be marketing spend, or new customer discounts and incentives. Existing customers, on the other hand, already trust your brand and know what to expect from your business, so turning these into repeat customers should be a much easier, and cheaper, task.
In order to develop valuable, long term relationships with your customers you need to move the interaction from being purely transactional in nature to something longer term. Proactive customer relationship management involves focusing on building loyalty among your existing client base.
Being available for your customers:
In the current environment, accessibility is a key factor in the success of any business. Think about how you can make your business more accessible to customers. Technology can help and businesses can leverage everything from automated chat bots on websites or making staff available to speak with customers on screen via Zoom or Skype.
Don’t forget about good old fashioned phone calls as well. Being on the end of the phone when your customers need you is hugely valuable – we have all heard customers complain about never being able to reach a company on the phone. If you are the company whose customers can always get someone on the phone to help, you will develop much more loyal relationships with your customers.
Feedback and Targeted Marketing:
Don’t forget to ask your customers for feedback. Your best customers will be more than willing to tell you what you can do better and where you can improve aspects of your product or service offering. This will make them feel valued and it also gives you valuable data for targeted marketing; once you have implemented customers’ ideas into improved products and services, you’ll know exactly who to sell these to!
Customer Loyalty Programmes:
A customer loyalty programme is a great way to encourage repeat purchases among your existing customer-base. For example, you could offer customers a 5% discount if they set up an automatic renewal, or 10% off every third purchase. Depending on the type of business that you run, you could offer something relatively simple like a stamp card, where every 10 purchases gives the customer the next one for free, or a more complex set of benefits based on long term purchasing history, or introductions to new customers. Do make sure that your industry regulations allow you to provide such incentives though – E R Grove for example cannot offer discounts as they are not permitted under our institute’s ethical guidelines.
Finally – say thank you to your customers. Not enough businesses do this and it will help you stand out from the crowd. Thank YOU for reading this blog… see what we did there?
For help and support with growing your business, speak to your accountant.
