Repeat customers are crucial for a company to be successful. Let’s face it, customer acquisition is expensive. Selling to a repeat customer is much more cost effective.
One of the most useful ways to gain a competitive advantage and retain customers is to offer stellar customer service. Customer satisfaction has a direct and positive impact on the growth and profitability of a company.
So how can you make your customers resist the competition and remain loyal to you?
- Change your focus. Shift your attention from your product to your customer.
- Exceed expectations. Merely satisfying a customer isn’t enough. Knock their socks off by anticipating and meeting their needs before they’re aware they need it.
- Be realistic. Don’t make promises you can’t deliver, and don’t set expectations you can’t meet.
- Implement a loyalty program. A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) program can help you solidify customer loyalty by providing your team with important customer information that will help to identify customer needs and ensure your company’s interactions with customers remain consistent and positive.
- Hire the right people. Be certain your customer base is being served by a team of exceptionally knowledgeable people who are enthusiastic about your product. Consumers are becoming more demanding than ever. Therefore, you’ve got to deliver more.
- Listen first. Make sure you understand the needs of the customer before selling a solution.
- Respond. Make certain that your company is able to promptly and effectively handle customer complaints. Being able to deal with problems as they arise is vital to reducing bad word-of-mouth and retaining your customer base.
- Do things right the first time. Okay, it’s not a perfect world, so in the case of service failure, make sure you have a service recovery strategy in place. Act fast, apologize, and make sure the customer is more than satisfied with the solution.
- Care about the customer more than the sale. Show a genuine interest in your customers and let them know you appreciate their business. Enforce this with your employees so that everyone understands the value of customer loyalty and is eager to maintain good customer relationships.
- Make each customer feel special. Remember their names and the specific products they like. Something as simple as that can make all the difference.
How would your customers rate your team on these 10 items? Are they running to tell their friends about their positive experiences or are they running to your competition. Often, the first step toward stellar customer service is to find out where you are now. This information is easily collected through a benchmark customer service survey or mystery shopping program.
