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Keep your customers happy and coming back for more
By Joanna L. Krotz
No doubt you've heard something about the 80/20 rule. Originally devised by
a nineteenth-century Italian economist named Vilfredo Pareto, the law grew
out of his keen observations about the trivial many and the critical few. Pareto
noticed that 80% of the possible value of business activities tends to come
from only 20% of the effort put into it.
Why should you care?
The 80/20 rule means that if you can define your critical few customers and
target marketing directly to their needs, it's likely to pay off big time. The cost
of acquiring new customers, according to many surveys, runs eight to 10 times
more than the cost of keeping existing ones. So you get a stronger return on
your marketing dollars and better sales by focusing on 20% or so of your top-
tier prospects. Usually, that requires three steps:
• Identify and characterize your key customers.
• Target messages in suitable media to hit nerves among the important
customer segments.
• Build in a payoff that rewards customers for giving you time and attention.
Here's how to stay connected to customers who count.
1. Identify Your Best Customers
First, find out more about your customer. You need to learn details about their
habits, profiles, and preferences before you can characterize them. In technical
terms, that translates into creating a customer database that can be
conveniently accessed and manipulated by the staff, including sales,
marketing, customer service, and billing.
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Information most helpful to collect (with the customer's permission, of course)
includes:
• Name, full address, phone number and/or e-mail address, including the
names of all family members or company title and department.
• Date of birth, so you can send out cards or e-mail with birthday discount
offers or gifts.
• Annual amount spent with your company.
• Products purchased and past history.
• Dates or schedule of purchases.
• Special offers acted on.
• Customer service history.
• Special requests for products or service.
• Participation in any loyalty clubs or events.
Business Contact Manager (BCM) can both capture customer intelligence andprovide the easy access you need to effectively mine customer information.
BCM is part of the Outlook e-mail program in Microsoft Office 2010 . It has
pre-formatted Account reports that give you immediate information about
who buys what, how well they pay, and more.
Business Contact Manager lets you go beyond simple contact information to
consolidate all interactions for a given customer or account, including e-mails,
tasks, appointments or sales calls, notes and other documents. Further, you
can easily create customized reports with criteria of your own choosing or, ifneeded, export those reports to Excel for further analysis.
2. Monitor That Data
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Using those tools, get into the habit of consistently updating customer
information. At every customer touch point, try to learn a little more or verify
your existing information. For instance, ask why the customer is buying the
larger size rather than the small one. Why choose blue rather than gray?
Has he or she been promoted, with a new title and responsibilities? Note any
responses to marketing efforts. Keep adding details and making sure the
customer profile is up-to-date.
After a half-dozen interactions, you'll not only have an individual account's
purchasing history and proprietary profile, you'll have it captured in a
centralized location for every customer—no more outdated sticky notes or
multiple folders with conflicting information. Plus, all the actionable
information will be easily accessible.
Armed with this information, you can categorize customers into four target
groups—from highest to lowest spenders. Then, analyze which products or
services grab the most attention or sales.
Next, start reviewing your list and segmenting customers. Pruning your client
base of low-margin, high-demand and time-consuming customers lets the
sales and service staff focus on key customers: loyal, repeat buyers and worthy
new prospects.
3. Target Your Messages
When you're clear about the target customer and you can rely on smart,
centralized customer information, you can send specialized offerings to
selected customer segments. Use Publisher part of Office 2010, to create
flyers, postcards or other mailings that send news of customized offers.
• Cross-sell or up-sell additional offers and products.
• Provide well-timed rewards or discounts.
• Communicate with customers in the medium they prefer—direct mail,
postcards, e-mail, phone, letters, flyers, or, in some cases, simply an annual
thank-you note.
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• Create insider or time-sensitive deals.
10 Ways to Make Customers Fall in Love
with Your Business
Nurturing relationships with your customers is a crucial part of growing a successful business. In this
age of automation and innovation, caring for your customers has never been more important.
At any moment, an unhappy customer can share their opinion with the masses through social media
and the web and negatively affect your business. That’s why it’s even more important than ever to
create an excellent experience for your customers to help develop your company’s relationship with
them into love.
Walt Disney said it best, “Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring
their friends.” Creating love between your company and your customers can help scale positive
word of mouth that’s absolutely priceless.
Creating a customer-focused culture of this nature is a business opportunity that should not be
overlooked. Most businesses are failing when it comes to the customer experience, which is your
opportunity to swoop in and enchant those same customers into falling for your company.
The data speaks for itself:
Only 37% of brands received good or excellent customer experience index scores in 2012.
Whereas, 64% of brands got a rating of “OK,” “poor,” or “very poor” from their
customers. Source: Forrester Research
As many as 89% of consumers began doing business with a competitor following a poor
customer experience. Source: RightNow
Up to 60% of consumers will pay more for a better customer experience.Source: Desk
Average annual value of each customer relationship lost to a competitor or abandoned –
$289. Source: Genesys Report
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It’s quite clear that now is a good time to solidify your relationship with your customers in a
meaningful way. Here are 10 ways to help make your customers fall in love with your business.
1. Treat your Customers Right – Genuinely Interact
Happy customers who get their issue resolved tell 4 to 6 people about their experience. So that’s a
way to significantly influence the word of mouth about your business. Don’t act as a nameless or
faceless business; genuinely talk with your customers as a person representing the business.
Address your customers by name, and tell them your name at the very beginning of your interaction.
Talk to your customers as you would in person, not like you would in a press release. Examples of
this are noticeable when it comes to customer service on social media where the genuine shine
through and the others seem forced and uptight, which is the opposite of being “social.” American
Express does this well onTwitter, ensuring all customer concerns are answered in a timely manner
with a friendly and personal response, signed by the employee who’s doing the tweeting.
2. Don’t Come on Too Strong – Respect Your Customers
A third of consumers say they experience rude customer service at least once a month, and 58% of
them tell their friends. This is exactly how word of mouth can work against your company’s
reputation for the long term. It’s very important to be respectful of a customer’s mood when trying to
resolve an issue they have with your company.
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Keeping your patience is key to giving your customer the time to air out their issue. And, in turn, it
creates the opportunity for you to help resolve the issue and make them comfortable. The more
comfortable the customer is the more likely they’ll share valuable feedback that can help prevent
similar issues from occurring again in the future.
3. Always Listen – Hear What Your Customers are Saying
At a time when it’s easy to have a two-way dialogue with your customers, it’s important to truly listen.
When listening to your customers, take into account what changes your organization should make
from this feedback, and then follow through. Your customers are the lifeblood of your organization,
and not dealing with the reasonable requests could cause backlash.
Use the following methods to gather feedback from your customers:
Surveys
Focus Groups
Observation
Point of Sale
Customer Service
Social Media
Communities and Groups
Email and Web Forms
4. Continue to Satisfy – Offer Ongoing Support and Specials
The #1 reason for customer attrition is dissatisfaction with customer service. Do everything in your
power to provide excellent service to your customers on an ongoing basis. Respond quickly and
enthusiastically, and be ready to present a special offer or discount with the hope of up-selling the
customer to buy more.
There’s never any reason to slow down on satisfying your audience, especially when they’re chatting
with you live over the phone. It’s important to note that 81% of companies with strong capabilities
and competencies for delivering customer experience excellence are outperforming their
competition. Take note, customer satisfaction is a key differentiator in a sea of other companies.
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Besides offering support, ongoing specials will continue to help enchant and satisfy your customers
for the long term. Create engaging multi-channel promotions centered around discounts, giveaways,
sweepstakes, and contests. Distribute these offers via email, social media, print, in-store, and across
your other marketing channels for full exposure, much like HairDazzle has done on Twitter above.
5. Treat a Customer Like a Valued Partner – Communication is Two Way
As previously mentioned, take your customer’s feedback seriously and act upon reasonable
requests. What’s the point of listening if you’re not going to act on that feedback? Make sure it’s
clear that you want your customer’s feedback and that your business truly values them as a partner.
If you’re looking for an example of how to show your customer that their opinion matters, look at
what the Buffer app team is doing. Buffer app is a social media management tool that helps
businesses and individuals schedule their content for the best times to share and get engagement.
The Buffer blog features a variety of quality content focused on marketing, achieving happiness, and
a monthly series known as the Happiness Report.
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This report highlights how the Buffer team is managing customer support each month by what
worked well, what didn’t work well, what they plan to work on for the future, and finally, a request for
feedback from their customers. This is a lesson for all businesses on how to be completelytransparent and actively allow your customers to partake in improving your product for the future.
Focusing on your customer to this degree is a major way to strengthen their trust, loyalty, and overall
love for your company.
6. Build Trust – Alert Customers to Large Scale Changes, Good or Bad
It takes 12 positive service experiences to make up for 1 negative experience. This is how sensitive
trust is between a business and its customers. No matter your size, keep your customers in the
know when it comes to positive and negatives changes to your products and services that affect
them. It’s crucial to tread lightly when making changes to your products and services because your
customers have become accustomed to what you’ve already got.
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Here’s an example of what not to do.
Recently, Instagram updated its terms of service but neglected to be clear about the changes that
would be made to the social network. The wording was confusing, and therefore, the company’s
intentions were not clear. Their users immediately voiced concern across the web about these
changes. Most of this feedback was outrage and many left the service or threatened to leave, like
power user National Geographic. Instagram quickly responded to the outrage andreversed their
decision to update their terms of service. In the end, the situation was handled well in terms of the
cleanup; but now, due to the poor communication around their terms of service, Instagram has lost
the trust of their audience, which is hard to regain.
Here’s what to do to gain trust:
Heavily research whether changes to your company could alter public perception.
Be methodical in how you communicate the changes to your product and services.
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Tell your customers when you’ve made a change, you’ve screwed up, or you’ve done something
right. A healthy mix will give your customers a transparent look into your company that can’t be
forged.
Find value in the feedback about your company changes.7. Be Transparent – Honesty is Crucial When it comes to Mistakes
Being transparent in the digital age is a must. Much like the principles discussed above,
transparency is a critical factor in building trust, satisfaction, and love from your customers. What
does it mean to be transparent?
Transparency means that you are not afraid of feedback.
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Transparency means that you have nothing to hide.
Transparency means your employees’ personal and work persona blur.
Transparency means you like to have conversations with your customers.
8. Follow Through on Your Word – Follow Up on Promises
Your word is your bond. Following up on your promises helps show the transparency of your
business, while helping to build a feeling of trust and dependability with your audience.
Manage the expectations of your customers to ensure realistic goals are set and can be met. By
remaining consistent in your messaging, your customers will learn what they should expect from you
in the future.
F.W. Nichol said it best, “When you get right down to the root of the meaning of the word “succeed,”
you find that it simply means to follow through.”
9. Recognize Responsibility – The Customer is Always Right
No matter the circumstance, the customer is always right. This is a rule to guide your business
through its growth, from customer service to user experience to product development. To help set
this in motion, create a customer service policy to show your customers they are always right.
Organize this policy into three parts:
1. Highlight phrases for your company to use that’ll make your customers happy. Again, consistency
and a personal touch go a long way.
2. Never let your customers forget your business by following up effectively. Keep it personal by
following up on special occasions and consistently writing handwritten follow-up notes.
3. Define how to deal with unsatisfied customers with action steps to ensure there is a thorough
process for all employees to follow to resolve a customer issue, ideally turning unhappy
customers into your strongest advocates.10. Always Say “Thank You” – Kindness and Gratitude will Take You Far
Last, but certainly not least, always say “Thank you.” As many as 3 out of 4 customers say they have
spent more with a company because of a history of positive experiences. Kindness and gratitude for
a customer’s business is an undeniable way to further enchant them for the long term.
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Craft every thank you sent out from your company to be specific to the customer, relevancy is key.
Be as appreciative as possible to your customers for taking the time to go through the process of
resolving their issue. Finally, follow up with a good old fashioned “Thank you.”
Take a look at these 10 golden rules of customer relationship managementvisualized.
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