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How to Effectively Communicate with Your Customers: Strategies to Implement

StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article |Communicate with your customers|How to Effectively Communicate with Your Customers: Strategies to ImplementIt is essential to communicate with your customers in order to have a successful business. This means understanding their needs and wants and delivering the message in a way that they will understand. There are many different strategies that you can implement in your business to improve customer communication. This blog post will discuss some of the most effective methods.

1. Be Available

The first step is always to be available. This means having someone available to answer customer questions or concerns at all times. It is essential to have a system in place so that customers can reach you when they need to, whether it be by phone, email, or live chat.

Being available also means being responsive. Customers should never feel like they are being ignored or that their concerns are not necessary to them. If you cannot answer their question immediately, let them know that you will get back to them as soon as possible. Make sure to follow through with this promise, as nothing is more frustrating than waiting for a response that never comes.

2. Listen to Your Customers

It is important to listen to your customers and take their feedback seriously. They are the ones who are using your product or service, so they have valuable insights that you can use to improve your business.

Make sure to create a system where customers can easily provide feedback, such as a survey or an online form. You should also make it a point to reach out to customers regularly to see how they are doing and if there is anything you can do to improve their experience. Listening to your customers will help you improve your business, but it will also show them that you care about their satisfaction.

3. Be Clear and Concise

When communicating with customers, it is important to be clear and concise. This means getting to the point and avoiding any ambiguity. Customers should never have to guess what you are trying to say or what you want them to do.

It is also important to use language that your customers will understand. Avoid using industry jargon or technical terms that they may not be familiar with. Instead, focus on making your message as simple and easy to understand as possible.

4. Run Direct Mailing Campaigns

Direct mailing campaigns can be a great way to reach out to your customers and communicate your message. This method allows you to send a physical piece of mail directly to their doorstep, which allows you to really capture their attention.

When creating a direct mailing campaign, it is vital to ensure that your message is clear and concise. You should also include a call-to-action so that customers know what you want them to do next. Finally, make sure to track your results so that you can see how effective the campaign was.

These are just some of the strategies that you can implement in your business to improve customer communication. By following these tips, you will be able to build better relationships with your customers and improve your chances of success.

How To Maintain Business Relevance In A Changing Market

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Business Relevance|How To Maintain Business Relevance In A Changing MarketBeing a business owner has its perks. For starters, you get to help your clients with innovative solutions while building wealth. Moreover, you have the freedom to determine how you work and what strategies will best suit your business. Despite these perks, you can quickly be left behind if your business isn’t relevant in a rapidly changing market. Statistics reveal that 42% of businesses fail because their products and services aren’t needed on the market. How can you thrive and stay ahead of your competition? Here are some smart strategies to help you out.

1. Practice regular communication with your customers

Your customers are instrumental to your business success, and communicating with them can ensure your business relevance. Irrespective of how innovative you imagine your products or services, your business would die out if your customers aren’t keen on them. According to the Harvard Business Review, businesses can’t keep their products on the market due to various reasons. While some products don’t have a market, others need customer education but fail to do so. Moreover, an Idea For Leaders survey revealed that customers would reject a product to stay in control. That said, it makes sense to involve them in your processes to ensure their loyalty.

The key is to think with them to create innovations for their current problems. Therefore, you’ll find it helpful to organize meetings with your clients to determine what products and services they need. Likewise, leverage the public forums on your social media platforms to ask questions. Emails and texts are also effective, but ensure that you send personalized messages to increase engagement. You can also utilize electronic surveys for the best results.

2. Improve your products and services

Competition is an integral part of entrepreneurship, and improving your products and services will ensure that your business stays ahead. Moreover, you can easily meet your consumers’ changing needs to avoid losing your customers’ patronage. A product and service improvement operation is in order if you experience low product demands and sales, increased production costs, and changes in regulations and laws. A 280 group survey indicates that 21% of products don’t meet customers’ needs. A Neilsen research also revealed that 63% of clients appreciated that manufacturers introduced innovative products.

Therefore, you want to consider this option if you haven’t already. Although product improvement may seem daunting, you can achieve it with the right steps. You can begin by identifying and fixing your pain points. Fortunately, you can retrieve the necessary information by creating client surveys and listening to your sales team. You can also source inspiration from your competitors, so keep this in mind.

3. Engage your employees

Your employees represent your brand, and their performance can keep your business thriving or destroy it. Therefore, it becomes imperative to prioritize and engage them in your business processes. Employee engagement comes with many benefits for your business. A Gallup survey revealed that businesses with highly engaged employees recorded 41% lower absenteeism cases. Likewise, engaged employees are likelier to offer better customer services, increasing customer loyalty, and sales. Moreover, high employee turnover rates can hurt your business’s credibility, and engaging your staff will keep them interested in working with you.

To get started, ensure that they are acquainted with your company’s values. Also, getting to know them better is a great way to build a good relationship with them, so keep this in mind. As a tip, ask them about their families and other important details to make them feel valued. It’s also important to create an enabling work environment and provide the right work tools to boost productivity. For instance, you’ll find it essential to get tools from quality brands like The Trimmer Store if you are in the cannabis industry. Likewise, appreciate their hard work and create career growth and development opportunities.

4. Invest in the right technology

While technology is an integral part of daily life, it’s become more important for maintaining business relevance. Leveraging tech in various business tasks ensures accuracy, so keep this in mind. For instance, using automated tools to conduct business research will help you access the needed information to promote business growth. Moreover, you can utilize AI to improve customer service, predict business trends and promote collaboration among teams. As many workers embrace remote working, technology makes it easier for them to communicate with other workers and enhance their efficiency. That said, you want to invest in technology if you haven’t already.

Using the wrong tech tools can be more harmful than beneficial despite their benefits. Therefore, ensure that your chosen tech options suit your business’s needs and improve your existing business processes. Also, invest in easy-to-use options to avoid time waste and complications. Tech tools used by other industry players are good options to consider, so keep this in mind.

How To Treat Your Customers Like Royalty

StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article |Customer Service|How To Treat Your Customers Like RoyaltyAs a business owner, you are undoubtedly looking for ideas to expand your customer base and increase your bottom line. One way to achieve that goal is by offering your customers a premium service beyond comparison.

In short, you should aim for excellence and provide nothing short of a first-class service to your customers. It might seem like an odd concept, but many customers feel fed up with poor customer service and sometimes getting treated like they aren’t important.

If you treat your customers like royalty, they’ll feel valued and respected by your company. What’s more, they are almost certainly going to keep spending their money with your business.

Here are some steps to illustrate how you can give your customers a premium service that’s both customized to their needs and solves their problems:

Offer a genuine 24/7 service

Everyone knows that an e-commerce website means a business is theoretically ‘open for business’ 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The thing is, while customers can order goods and services online, they can’t get out of hours help if they need it.

You can buck that trend by offering a genuine 24/7 service to all your customers. You could provide the right support they need at any time via email, instant messaging, social media, or telephone.

The way you can do that is by either employing staff to work in shifts to cover the full 24 hours or outsourcing your contact center operations. If you opt for the latter, it would be better if you did so to a team in the same country as you.

Offer an express delivery service as standard

If you only sell digital products and services, you can probably ignore this section as it’s something you likely do anyway. But, if you need to send physical goods to your customers, don’t make them wait a long time for their orders.
It’s no secret that companies like Amazon offer next-day and even same-day services to all their customers, irrespective of where they live. Nothing is stopping your business from providing fast delivery if it partners with an expedited freight company.

You might be wondering how you can employ such a concept with your company if you only have a small business. The good news is you can use outsourced fulfillment services to stock your goods in various locations across the country.
Expedited freight companies can quickly haul your stock to each warehouse, and you can use local delivery options that promise next-day or same-day services.

Provide exceptional customer care

Lastly, you should go beyond the call of duty to ensure your customers have an excellent buying experience with you. That starts from the moment they enquire about what you sell through to the delivery of their orders.
Of course, your first-class customer care shouldn’t end once your customers receive their orders. You should back up what you sell with an aftercare service that’s beyond compare. Doing so will tempt your audience away from your competitors, even if you charge more!

How to Improve Customer Loyalty in eCommerce Businesses

StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article|Customer Loyalty|How to Improve Customer Loyalty in eCommerce BusinessesToday’s eCommerce market is very competitive, making brand loyalty an elusive concept for many. To keep the customer happy, you’ll need to consider several factors: top-notch customer service, consistency, product qualities, and much more.

However, it’s never enough to sustain customer loyalty; you have to keep inspiring them with new tactics and products.
According to statistics, it is 5 times more costly to win over new customers than to make the existing ones stay loyal to you.

A friendly relationship with customers ensures improved loyalty while keeping the revenue flowing. Loyal buyers are likely to give positive reviews about your brand and products and motivate more visitors to place their orders.

Here are some implementable methods of boosting your buyers’ shopping experience to win their loyalty:

Improve User Experience

To improve user experience in your store, consider building a secure connection with your clients. With their consent, you can send promotional emails and other information you think will trigger their interest.

When new products or stock arrive, make sure you alert them and even surprise them with VIP vouchers. Using their purchasing history, you can personalize buyer experiences by recommending offers to related products.

Customer communication is vital. Using email newsletters, you can share relevant content with customers and even send them surveys on how you can improve their experience.

Simplifying the ordering and payment process is also another way of enhancing customer experience. You can achieve this by adding categories of wishlists to customer accounts to allow them to save products for later purchasing.

Providing multiple payment and shipping options will make it easy to target international buyers who’ll conveniently pay for products from their mobile devices from wherever they are.

Such dedication will make them feel valued and improve their loyalty.

Create and Implement an Excellent Loyalty Program

To boost customer loyalty in your online store, consider creating a good loyalty program. Loyalty programs are proven to please your customers and build a community of buyers who’ll spread the word about your brand and products by sharing their success stories.

Reward programs make customers loyal and also provide a rush knowing that after a few more purchases, they’ll accumulate enough points to get the product they’ve been yearning for.

These programs also make them feel part of a buzzing online community that allows them to bond with other customers.

A loyalty program can help you boost your online store’s revenue and retain customers as well. You can simplify the process of joining by promoting it through email, on your website, or social media and offer them extra sign up points.

You can also take this time to put some of your products up for sale, surprise buyers with freebies on purchases, or offer discounts on particular products. If you are selling products where trends change frequently, you’ll be able to clear last-season stock and order more trending options.

Make Return Policies Easy

When your customers know that they’ll get goods quickly after ordering or returning, they’ll stay true to your brand.
Delivery issues can deter them from coming back. If a customer requests a particular outfit from your store, deliver as promised as you may be inconveniencing their plans and make them look elsewhere for attention.

Cost-effective and straightforward return policies can drive customer loyalty. Remember always to be generous with shipping prices to lure more buyers. You can offer free shipping and increase repeat customers. With buyer-friendly return policies, you may boost your e-store’s conversions.

Offer your customers multiple return options such as free two-way returns, flat-fee shipping, pickup options, a 1-year return policy, and much more. Always weigh the cost of returns against your risk of losing repeat customers.

Make Customer Support a Priority

Set up multiple ways through which customers can access support from your online fashion store. It can be through chatbots or live customer service agents who’ll answer all their questions regarding your products or address customer concerns.

Your customer support ability will reflect value to your customers. Therefore, excellent customer support should be a priority if you want to have loyal customers. The way you handle customers’ concerns, complaints, and questions makes them keep a score and form judgments about your brand.

Train your customer support teams to be friendly, efficient, and helpful to customers. A quick response will improve customer loyalty.

Enhance Your Email Marketing Strategy

Understanding your customers and speaking their language can help to improve your retention and conversion rates drastically. Create an ideal customer profile that will enable you to address their individual needs consistently.

In your email marketing strategy, offer your customers the option to receive only those emails related to the products they are interested in or those relevant to their purchase history.

Emailing is an excellent way of connecting with online buyers. To entice new customers who’ve made a purchase, you can greet them with a welcoming message, thank them for choosing your brand and your products, and offer them options for cross-selling and upselling.

To keep your web visitors engaged even if they haven’t made a purchase recently, sending them a recurrent email with a discount code can encourage them to buy from you again.

You can also send timely emails during their birthday or holidays with personalized offers. This approach is effective in improving customer loyalty.

Form Partnerships with Other Businesses

Did you know that partnering with other businesses is an excellent strategic way to increase customer loyalty? Partnering with established firms helps you identify better ways to engage, communicate and interact with your customers. For instance, through partnering, you can learn how a business engages with its customers.

If the method the business uses proves successful, there is no harm in trying it. Besides, you can access better technology that can help you communicate effectively with your customers. If you partner with a well-known business, this can dramatically improve the loyalty of your customers.

Especially for new businesses, they must consider partnering with other companies first to attract and retain customers, and eventually improve customer loyalty. Such startups can effectively do this through franchising. If you don’t know what’s a franchise, this is where a new business gets established under an existing company.

Starting and running a new business is daunting, especially in attracting and retaining customers. But through a franchise, a startup will garner a good market percentage and help keep such customers in the long run.

Final Thoughts

Your customers’ loyalty determines your eCommerce store’s growth. You should not underestimate the value of building close relationships with your buyers.

Devote your efforts and attention to satisfying their needs, and they’ll feel valued enough to make repeat purchases and help you market your products to prospects through positive reviews.


About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Joe PetersJoe Peters is a Baltimore-based freelance writer and an ultimate techie. When he is not working his magic as a marketing consultant, this incurable tech junkie devours the news on the latest gadgets and binge-watches his favorite TV shows. Follow him on @bmorepeters

6 Ways To Improve Your Customer Service

StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article |Improve Customer Service|6 Ways To Improve Your Customer ServiceCustomer service has always been an important part of any successful business but in an economy that is struggling due to the Coronavirus pandemic, it has never been more vital to provide a flawless customer experience.

Have the right systems in place

Being available to your customers at the right times and on the right platforms is crucial. Most businesses have call centers and an online presence in the form of live chat, social media listening, and email. If your phone system is outdated then contact some specialist VOIP providers who will be able to advise you.

Learn to listen

Many companies can fall into the trap of just seeing their customers as faceless voices at the end of a phone or email. There is a real person with a real problem on the other side of any conversation.

Train your employees to actively listen rather than just read a script. Interact, engage, and empathize with your customers.

Use the right language

It can be easy to fall into an overly formal standard of language. It is seen as a way of communicating clearly and leaving no room for misinterpretation. It often has many negative effects on your customers. It is difficult to create a level of trust and friendliness, which is not good for your brand. When training your customer service reps, ensure that you create an atmosphere of friendliness and positivity.

Create experts in your customer service team

As a customer, there is nothing more infuriating than talking to someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about or their lack of product knowledge. Even your first line support staff should know your products and services in-depth.

Respond in a timely manner

The time it takes for you to respond to a customer will have a huge impact on overall customer satisfaction. Not just the time it takes to answer the initial call but when responding to a customer’s query. Even if you don’t have a resolution to their issue right now, you should contact them to let them know you are still dealing with their issue.

Analyze customer feedback to improve

Continuous improvement cannot happen if you do not learn from your customer interaction. Rather than conduct a huge survey on an irregular basis, try building feedback into your daily customer service. Using feedback tools at the end of every customer service interaction will give you a real-time view of how you are performing. Changes can be made in a timely manner and improvements observed quickly.

Conclusion

Great customer service comes from really connecting with your customers on a professional and personal level. Customers expect speed, product knowledge, and a swift resolution to their issues. If you are failing to provide all of these, then you are going to start seeing the detrimental effects on your customer base and client retention. Use customer service as a key component in your business strategy.

Listen to your customers and improve your customer service levels accordingly in order to continue to improve.