Guest post by Mary Stedul
All businesses realize or should realize that customers are integral to their success. After all, no business has ever flourished without any customers.
To the contrary, businesses that develop good relationships with their customers experience the highest success levels.
This has been the case throughout history. Trust is probably the primary factor that is crucial to a successful connection.
If customers do not trust a particular business, they will certainly not purchase anything from it. Communication between the two is integral in establishing and building on this trust.
Before telephones were invented, the relationship between a business and its customers was deeply personal. All communication occurred face-to-face, which meant that business owners received direct responses on their offerings.
Customers who voiced their complaints on some products also received instant feedback.
When Alexander Graham-Bell brought about the telephone, business-customer interactions altered forever.
Instead of traveling directly to the store, customers could simply call the business and give their feedback, positive or negative.
This made interactions less personal. However, they saved considerable amounts of time which people would spend traveling. In addition, they enabled business personnel to communicate with more people.
Improved Relations
Communications have developed significantly since those early days. For instance, businesses developed call centers. These made communication between customers and businesses easier since the customers talked with persons who were trained in handling their complaint, if any.
These centers helped to cement customers’ faith in the businesses. Businesses then developed the Interactive Voice Response, or IVR, system. This let customers find specific solutions to their issues. However, it was impersonal since customers were talking with machines.
Presently, the rise of the Internet has facilitated numerous new methods in which customers and businesses connect. Communication occurs through social networks like Facebook, live chat and emails.
Nowadays, it is common to find customers doing online surveys for their favorite brands. Gathering information from customers has become incredibly simple.
This has made it substantially easy for business to know what their customers actually want and how they can address these wants. This generally leads to improved relations and increased profits.
Virtually Limitless
It is essential that your business establish a trusting connection with your consumers, regardless of your business type. A great connection is vital in the business world for various reasons.
First, it lets you minimize waste. If you alter your offering or products even slightly, so that it becomes closer to what your customers want, your sales will drive up.
Second, it offers you considerable benefits over your competition. Customers will let you know what they like or dislike about your competition, and you can utilize that edge to make your offerings more appealing.
Third, it improves customers’ attitudes towards your business. You can achieve this by sacrificing automated call responses for actual call centers and always ask for feedback from your customers.
You should also consider suggestions and complaints as useful and helpful instead of irritating and annoying.
If you respond to the feedback, that will be better. You can obtain feedback through soft launches, pilot tests, focus groups and others.
Your Customers Will Thank You
All these steps will make your customers feel treasured and valued. In turn, they will become loyal and may even introduce new customers to your business.
In fact, statistics have shown that customers who are exceptionally pleased with a certain business will tell between four and six persons about their positive experience.
This will generate curiosity and will persuade those other people to purchase from your business, especially since friends or family members rarely recommended businesses in which they are not involved.
Within a few years, your profits could be mind-blowing. More crucially, smooth communication with your customers will help in ensuring that the customers you do have never leave. This way, your business will only have room for growing.
A connection with your customers is also important in promoting your activities. If you let your customers know all about your activities and how they will benefit, they will lack any reason for not participating in them.
On the whole, a connection between your business and your customers is integral. It is irrelevant what industry your business is in and how small or massive you are.
Customers are virtually limitless, and making them like your business will boost it in a manner that all the world’s best advertisements cannot match.
About The Author
Mary Stedul is a freelance writer and a blogger. She has contributed to many websites and blogs with her articles. Currently, she is writing articles for Hunting With Pixels company. In her spare time she likes to write about herself in third person.
