Cultivating healthy, ongoing relationships with your customers has long been a key element of doing good business. Because the more your customers trust you, the more likely they’ll be to come back. And there’s little in the world that’s better for business than loyal repeat customers. For these reasons and more, it’s essential to nail communication with your customers.
However, doing so is easier said than done. It takes hard work, consistency, and authenticity to foster a healthy relationship with your customers. But it’s certainly not impossible, and many businesses facilitate good customer communication and relations their point of pride. Here are three ways you can do just that.
3 Ways to Facilitate Customer Communication
1. Open the Channels of Communication
As a business owner, you need to provide plenty of opportunities for healthy communication to happen in the first place. Unless, of course, you and your clientele have mastered the mystic art of telepathy. Literal business wizards notwithstanding, you need to open and maintain communication channels you and your customers can leverage.
This may sound not easy initially, but it can be as simple as being present in your physical store more often. This gives customers opportunities to speak with you directly. It could also mean being available to reach via email.
Some customers usually prefer to talk over the phone, whereas others prefer to chat via an online messenger. Offering multiple channels of communication encourages your customers to engage with your business in ways they appreciate. Make sure you are where they are.
All that said, it’s no secret that maintaining multiple communication channels is an investment. Attending to each channel takes time, energy, money, dedication, and consistency. One way to curb and maximize your investment in communication channels is to use a business communication tool. That way, you’ll consolidate all your channels into one simple platform, making communication easier for everyone involved.
So, think of these channels like a highway: the better you maintain the road, the more quickly your customers can reach you.
2. Be Trustworthy (Own Your Mistakes)
In an age dominated by faceless corporations and AI-generated spam, more and more people crave authenticity. This is true in both private and public arenas, like business. While there are many downsides to the onslaught of inauthenticity, there are also excellent business opportunities. Because people yearn for honesty, they’ll turn to trustworthy businesses. Here’s how your business can appear and actually be more reliable.
To be trustworthy, live by your company values. To identify your business’s values, take some time to reflect on your underlying core beliefs.
What shapes your decision-making? What matters to you most, ensuring your customers get the best quality service or cutting costs wherever possible?
Plenty of businesses are built on both sets of values. So, the better you can articulate your values, the better you can facilitate communication with your customers and employees.
Like any other organization, businesses are built on a network of people, and people aren’t perfect. Mistakes happen; rather than cover them up, be honest and transparent about them. If you ship a product to the wrong person, take responsibility and ship a new product to the right person.
People tend to respect and trust businesses that take responsibility for their actions, both the good and the bad. To be authentic, admit your mistakes and work to improve on them whenever possible.
3. Personalize for Loyal Customers
What’s your best customer’s name? If you don’t know the answer to this question, it’s time to find out. Personalizing your business is one of the best ways to facilitate good customer communication. Because people love to be remembered and recognized for who they are. And if they’re a dedicated, loyal customer, you must acknowledge them as such.
Remembering your customers’ names is just the first step to personalizing your communications with them. Keep track of important information and use it to make them feel special and seen. For example, use your business communications tool to tell them happy birthday via their preferred channel. You can even send them a gift, such as a free item or a notable discount on their favorite product.
Don’t be the only one in your company to focus on personalization. Train your employees and other associates how to remember people’s names. Do this no matter how big of a business you are. Ignoring or abandoning personalized communication is one of the main ways that corporations become “faceless.” And, in many ways, loyal, repeat customers are the lifeblood of your operation. So, reward loyalty by focusing on personalizing items and services whenever possible.
Shift Your Mindset
You need to make a mental shift to master effective customer communication. Do not view it as a simple business strategy. View it as an essential philosophical element of what doing business is.
This means not viewing interactions with your customers as a means to an end or an obstacle to getting them to buy something. See communication with your customers as an opportunity to provide them with value. This isn’t just a one-time effort, either. It’s an ongoing journey of improvement to meet and exceed your customers’ expectations. The more you can deliver on what you’re trusted to do, the more likely they’ll return for more.
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