Customer relationships are key to success: Strategies to improve them

This guide outlines the smart strategies for improving customer relationships — and thus improving your business success opportunities.

The modern consumer has high expectations and a great product doesn’t cut it anymore. The world of online retail means that people have more choices than ever and there are plenty of people out there with great products. Customers also want a company that is invested in forming a relationship with them and they want a personalized service, which is why customer relationships building is one of the most important aspects of your business.

If your company is thinking long term, you need to understand how to improve customer relationships. Managers and employees who focus only on conversion disappoint the consumer and discourage loyalty.

Imagine the following situation: you have been wanting to buy a product/service for a long time. He researched a lot until he chose the one that best suited his needs, made the decision and, of course, hoped not to have any problems with him. Everything was fine, until you needed to contact the company’s support and received poor service. Frustrating, isn’t it?

Let’s face it, situations like this can undermine the relationship with the customer, as they make them distrust the solution you offer. Nowadays, the least that the consumer expects from any company is a quality service . If she serves with excellence and focuses on providing effective support, the customer will know they were valued. Otherwise, they will likely consider canceling services with that brand.

You sure don’t want that to happen, do you? So, check out the strategies on how to improve customer relationships and raise your level of service!

How to fix and improve customer relationships

Unfortunately, a lot of companies struggle to forge those connections with potential customers and it has a big impact on sales. If you are having relationship issues, these are some of the best ways to fix it.

Know your audience

If you want to know how to improve customer relationships, you need to get to know them in the first place. Understanding what their main pains are and how they prefer to be attended to are essential steps to strengthen this relationship.

Therefore, you need to pay attention to the language used: it would be bad to speak more informally with a more serious customer, just as it would not be nice to be too formal with someone who is relaxed. In this way, you show your customer that you know and care about them.

Use social media for customer relationships

Social media is one of the best digital marketing tools that you have at your disposal, but a lot of businesses fail to take full advantage of it for customer relationships. It’s a great way to build a brand and share content, but it’s also a brilliant communication tool. You can interact directly with customers and respond to their comments and likes, which is such a simple way to make people feel seen and start building that relationship.

This kind of engagement is one of the best things about social media, so it’s important that you are active and you respond to everybody. If you find that difficult, consider hiring a digital marketing agency to manage your accounts for you. Having a dedicated company taking care of your social media accounts means that all customers will get a response and you can increase engagement, which will improve those customer relationships.

Expand customer relationships support options

There are a lot of different ways to communicate with customers and offer support, so it’s important that you make it as easy as possible for people to reach you. Having a well staffed call center is important, but what about live chat services or email support? If you provide more channels for your customers to communicate with you, it’s easier to get that dialogue going and your customer relationships will be better.

Some people don’t have the time to call you on the phone if they have a busy work life and they’d rather go through email or live chat, so investing in new communication tools for customer relationships makes life easier for them.

The big secret to improving customer relationships is letting them tell us their insights. After all, not all the solutions devised by us really please consumers. Satisfaction surveys are the simplest and fastest channels to get this feedback .

Have you ever been to a store and found a device that measures the level of your customer service experience on the way out? So, we call this a satisfaction survey strategy , and it can be done in many ways: on paper, on in-store devices, and even online. Therefore, you can (and should) ask these questions and be aware of the feedback that your customers give.

To carry out the survey, at the end of each service, you can apply a questionnaire asking the customer to assess the support they received. In fact, one of the most common ways to request this opinion is through the NPS (Net Promoter Score) method , which consists of the question “on a scale from 0 to 10, how much would you recommend my company to a friend or colleague?”

With feedback collected, you will be able to find opportunities to improve the service provided and further strengthen what is already good. Therefore, generating data on how to maintain a good relationship with customers.

Keep an accurate service history

Can you imagine how annoying it is for your customer, every time they contact support, having to say the same things and explain the same problem? A company that does not maintain service histories can put the customer’s satisfaction at risk, as he will notice the lack of preparation and lack of organization of the team. To avoid such situations, you can count on the help of an answering system to control this information .

These data will certainly help you to provide much better support to your consumers, since professionals will be able to access previous information about those who contact your company.

In this way, you will be able to provide a more human and personalized service, the basic pillars of how to improve the relationship with customers. And, of course, keep it in the long run.

Empathize and solve the problem

You must understand that when they are unhappy, your customer’s unhappiness becomes yours too. Therefore, be empathetic and always put yourself in the other person’s shoes. If she is having a problem with her service, everyone loses.

And that brings us to another strategy for improving customer relationships: Solve the problem. It sounds obvious, but you must always be prepared to act in the best and most effective way possible. After all, when you are in this situation, as a consumer, you want the attendant to really understand you and everything is resolved, right? Well, your customer thinks the same way.

When the service is delayed, no matter how good the service is, the desire is to cancel everything with the company, right? As we’ve commented on in previous topics, your audience thinks the same thing!

Therefore, to ensure a good relationship with the customer, it is essential that you, in addition to having a powerful service team, train your employees correctly so that they can serve quickly and ensure the satisfaction that your customers deserve.

An important tip on how to improve the relationship with customers is not to write too long texts and not delay to give the first answer . In this way, you avoid the customer being dissatisfied and wanting to go to the competition.

Encourage customer reviews

The customer journey doesn’t end once you have made a sale and if you don’t pay attention to existing customers, you won’t be able to build a long lasting relationship. People want to feel that their opinion is valued, which is why you should encourage customer reviews. It gives them the opportunity to give their verdict on the product and address any potential issues that they might have.

It’s also very useful for you because it shows you if there is a problem with the product or your customer service that needs to be fixed. On top of that, it acts as a great marketing tool because people have a lot of trust in the opinions of existing customers and lots of good reviews will drive sales.

Personalize your email marketing

Email marketing is a great cost-effective way to reach your customers, and improve customer relationships — and it’s so easy to add a personal touch. Firstly, always use the customer’s name in every email that you send them. It’s only a small thing but it immediately establishes a level of trust between you.

You can also use personalized product recommendations based on their previous purchases or their browsing history on your website. Sending a list of recommendations for products that they are actually interested in is far more valuable than sending the same generic list of deals and offers to everybody on your email list.

Host a business event

The online world is great, but there’s no better way to form a relationship with customers than meeting them face to face to cement customer relationships. That’s why you should consider hosting your own business event and getting up close and personal with customers. It’s a brilliant opportunity to meet a lot of potential customers in a short space of time. It also allows you to demonstrate your product in the flesh, which is a lot more effective than the pictures and videos on your website.

Hosting an event is a big investment, but it can be a very effective way to forge relationships with new customers. If you are releasing a new product, a launch event is a particularly good way to get people interested.

Worry about your customer’s success

Another great strategy on how to improve customer relationships is to invest in an area of Customer Success (CS) . That’s because while technical support is reactive – it only receives demands – CS is proactive and works to ensure that the consumer is reaching their goals.

A CS area will be able to identify if customers are using the service correctly and achieving the expected result. However, investing in this culture is not the only way to help consumers. You can also send e-books, manual, conduct webinars by answering frequently asked questions, and even produce a weekly newsletter.

Using these strategies to build personal customer relationships is one of the most effective ways that you can boost sales.