The adage that the customer is always right still holds. Today, more than ever, new businesses need to appreciate how important it is to maintain happy customer relationships. Starting a new business is no mean feat. However, masterful customer relationship management could be the secret ingredient to success.
“The customer is king.”
According to Informi, your goal in starting a company “is to get something off the ground that offers sustainability and long-term growth potential.” if you’re starting with a business, you could be forgiven for feeling like the main goal was to make a high-quality product or service and pitch it at the right price to the right people. But however necessary these steps are, they’re better thought of as first steps. At the end of the day, if there’s no customer, there’s no business, period.
At the centre of your business’s success is a delicate web of interactions with your clients or customers—their engagement with your brand, their perceptions of your company, and their loyalty and retention. You could build a perfect business on paper, but you don't have a business if you’re not developing value-adding, long-term relationships with your customers.
Big and small businesses can benefit from spending time fostering customer engagement throughout their lives. By tracking and nurturing the relationship across social media, phone, chat, email, and other marketing materials, rewards, and gifts, customers can communicate their more profound mission with clients, regardless of whether a purchase has been made. They understand it as a relationship that responds to customer wariness and the growing need to engage with humans, not faceless organisations.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software is about tracking and organising the countless pieces of customer data to position you best to fill their needs. Like “digital Rolodexes,” you get to track customer demographics, account details, and sales opportunities. Analyse this data, and you can see how to adjust your targets and methods more easily.
Part of the reason companies have to work so hard is that customers are more sophisticated and discerning than ever. It is bombarded on social media and saturated with traditional marketing. Imping customers and convincing them to part with their money, attention, and loyalty over time takes a lot.
Younger age demographics have less disposable income than previous generations but are massively more socially conscious and care about companies that can demonstrate that they go beyond merely wanting to extract a profit. Please communicate with your customers unexpectedly, with no expectation of spending on their part.
Leads and sales revenue are one metric of your business success, but factors like customer retention and loyalty will play a more significant role in your business thriving. Retaining customers will always be cheaper than finding new ones. Though it depends somewhat on your business model, few companies can afford to forgo repeat customers and abandon the client after a sale. Your rapport with clients is something that has, ideally, no endpoint. You prove your products’ efficacy initially, but after that, your ability to maintain the customer’s preference for your product or service is more important.
Perhaps the most obvious reason to pay close attention to customer relations is that a negative review or interaction can be much more damaging than a dozen positive ones. Prospective customers value word-of-mouth and online reviews, and a single disgruntled client can draw unwanted attention to your brand and image.
Treat customers right, and they’ll reward you with repeat customs; make them feel disposable or dismissed, and they’ll leave, or worse. Though a good customer relationship strategy will prevent you from getting to that stage, an angry customer can still be an opportunity: seize the moment to demonstrate a genuine commitment to fixing things and making the customer happy. Manage a complaint correctly, and you may convert them to a lifelong customer who will sing your praises.
The principles of customer relationship management are ultimately not too different from the rules for maintaining any relationship. Always seek to add genuine value, communicate, and listen to your customers. Overpromise and underdeliver; when you mess up, take responsibility and do what you must to make things right again.
A solid business plan and a product or service that people want are two fundamentals in business. But they’re necessary but not sufficient conditions for success. Companies with long-term success know they cannot stay in business without concentrating on their customers at every engagement stage.
Ruby Clarkson
Writer, editor, animal lover and coffee enthusiastruby.clarkson@harbourmail.co.uk