Before company management can provide customers with excellent products and services, they must understand their motivations, problems, and other factors that go beyond the surface level. Companies that take them time to invest in knowing their customers can anticipate needs, provide early solutions, and consistently exceed their expectations.
This level of attentiveness to customers also pays off in improved loyalty and recommendations to friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues. Below are four tips businesses can take to get to know their customers better and reap the rewards for doing so.
View the Business and Its Services from a Customer’s Point of View
One of the greatest indicators of empathy is the ability to look at a situation from another person’s point of view. Businesses that want to improve customer relationships would be wise to train their staff to do this, starting with points of contact with the company.
- Do emails receive prompt responses?
- Is the person who answers phones or schedules appointments friendly and helpful?
- Does the customer waiting area look neat?
These are just some of the questions to ask customers in the form of a survey or focus group to get a feel for the current level of customer service.
Thanking customers and remembering their names can go a long way towards building customer loyalty. There’s no way to go wrong when making customers feel appreciated on a regular basis.
Track Customers Throughout Their Buying Journey
Not all customers will respond to a survey or even share their complaints with a company. Instead, they will stop patronizing the business and complain to others about it. This is just one reason why it’s so important to understand the buying journey from start to finish for as many customers as possible.
Web behavior tracking, which allows brands to provide real-time offers based on what people look at and interact with online, is just one way to go about this. While businesses might worry about coming across as intrusive, a recent Accenture survey found that more than 80 percent of consumers are okay with online tracking if creates a personalized and improved experience for them.
Follow Up After a Customer Completes an Action
It’s a common marketing tactic for businesses to offer potential customers a free download, video link, or a discount via email. Unfortunately, it’s also common for companies not to follow through with these same people once they have taken a specific action. Obtaining feedback from customers who completed a desired action provides essential insight into the effectiveness of the offer to convert the person into a customer. It’s also a good idea to track the customer to find out his or her opinions on how to improve the offer.
Use Available Data in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software
In searching for the best ways to understand customers, some companies overlook one of the most basic ways of all. CRM software contains valuable data such as buying patterns and other customer behavior that the company can use to its advantage by serving customers in a proactive manner.
Regardless of the specific actions taken, a commitment to customer service excellence is the first step all companies must take before improvement becomes possible.
Image credit: Purchased and used with permission from 123RF.com / Jakub Jirsak
