How To Win Your Customers' Heart

One unhappy customer can spread the word about your business and cost you potential clients very quickly. You can expect to have only one chance to make a good impression with your customer service department.

 

One of the major challenges for start-ups and small and medium scale enterprises is ensuring patronage, according to experts. They observe that many young entrepreneurs often assume that after getting a good business plan, securing the needed funds and establishing a business, their job is done. However, many go on to discover that getting acceptance and patronage can also be challenging, with many finding it even more tasking to retain their customers or ensure that they stay loyal.

But with many companies competing for customers, experts stress that entrepreneurs must ensure that they do their utmost to keep their customers loyal as failure in this regard may mean failure of the business and the loss of their investment, which may lead to financial ruin.

The good news is that there are many steps that companies can take to ensure that their customers or clients keep patronising them despite the pervading stiff competition.

Some of the steps recommended by experts are explained below.

 

Exceed expectations

As an entrepreneur, it is important that you ensure that you deliver the ‘goods.’ You must ensure that your product or service meets the needs of your clients. Some experts stress that even that may not be enough to keep them loyal as it is possible that other companies can also meet their needs. According to them, for you to truly have an edge and keep the customer more loyal, you need to exceed their expectations. This means you have to give them something extra; something they didn’t expect, but which they will be delighted to have. As long as they know that you go the extra mile to ensure they don’t just get value for their money but that they get more than their money’s worth, they are unlikely to stop coming back for more.

 

Provide excellent customer service

No matter how good or affordable your products or services are, experts say if you have terrible customer service, some of your customers won’t mind settling for less just to avoid the ‘horrors’ they get to face whenever they patronise you. There are several companies today that list phone numbers that never connect on their products. What this means is that when a customer wants to seek clarification on the usage of a product, for instance, the customer may have to go all the way to your office. Even when this is not the case, many customers have taken to the social media to lament about how rude a customer service agent was to them with many of them not only deciding to stop patronising the company involved but also encouraging their friends not to bother trying. It could be worse; these are just mild examples. On the flip side, experts say companies with excellent customer service are capable of keeping their customers loyal even when their products are not the best around. Some customers will rather settle for less than go for more, knowing they would be poorly treated as a result.

 

Ensure your service is good enough for you

As an entrepreneur, experts say another way you can keep your customers loyal is by ensuring that you treat them the way you would treat yourself. There are definitely products and services, which you don’t produce or provide, that you depend on other companies for. How do you expect those companies to treat you? What kind of services do you expect from them? Are your services that good? Are you treating your customers that way or even better? You have to view things from the customer’s perspective and ensure that you put yourself in their shoes when coming up with new strategies. That will help you get it right.

 

Build relationships

To keep customers loyal, it is important that entrepreneurs build or have a good relationship with their clients. And it is these little things that help to build that relationship. There will be indecisive customers and customers with complaints, etc. How would you deal with them? How patient are you with clients? Do your workers have the patience to allow choosy customers to make up their minds? Or are they likely to snap, “Make up your mind; I don’t have all day?”

According to experts, building relationships involves the ability to keep a smiling face, develop rapport with your clients and remember their names, among other things.

In building relationships, experts say it is also important that you have transparent dealings with your customers.

 

For instance, if you or one of your workers makes a mistake, it is important that you take responsibility for that mistake and make amends for it. If you run a delivery service and you send the wrong item to a customer, apologise and quickly correct the error instead of trying to make it a win-win situation by suggesting that the item sent would serve the same purpose.

Experts explain that honesty and sincerity are very vital in sustaining and boosting customer loyalty. They say with the level of competition among companies, it is easier for customers to know when companies are sincere in dealing with them or lying to them. By being sincere or honest in your dealings, customers will get to trust you and once they perceive that you are credible, they are less likely to stop coming back.

 

Reward loyal customers

So, in your quest to attract new customers, registration for your gym is now half what it used to be with huge discounts on other charges for new members? What about the old members? What are you doing for them? Nothing. This is a mistake several business owners make, according to experts. They warn that once old customers get the feeling that they are being taken for granted, they are likely to move on. They add that it is important for business owners to note that gaining X amount of new customers and losing the same amount of old customers means there has been no gain; rather, the company may end up losing as the new customers may not even stay for as long as the old ones.

 

Educate your employees

While it is possible to attract customers by constantly throwing products ‘in their faces’ through adverts and the likes, expert say a sure way to win customer loyalty is by educating them about what they need or what is best for them. They explain that once you start adding value to your employees by providing them with useful information about what they need, what is good for them and how they can avoid certain pitfalls, you stand a chance of boosting their loyalty to you.