Do you invest more time and money into acquiring new customers than strengthening existing customer relationships? We’re gonna guess about 90% of you responded with a “yes.”
Happy customers are your best revenue generator. It’s why investing in customer experience is so important but often overlooked.
According to our friends at HubSpot, customer experience is the impression your customers have of your brand as a whole throughout all aspects of the buyer’s journey. It results in their view of your brand and impacts factors related to your bottom line including revenue.
In the olden days, companies had all the power. Now, thanks to social media (Meta—bahahah), it’s customers. Take a look at Uncle Bob’s Facebook and you’ll see his latest post about Old Country Buffet. Due to his bad experience, he is telling all 30 of his acquaintances. While highly doubtful, those 30 people could boycott Old Country Buffet because of Uncle Bob’s scathing review. The horror!
The fact is when customers talk you want them to say good things and that doesn’t just happen without an investment.
Get input
If you are not getting regular feedback from your customers, you’re either too scared or too lazy. Either way, pull your head out of you know where and build a process. Since we are retainer and project based, we send surveys annually and at project completion. It is a way for us to identify potential issues and to get a gauge on how we are performing.
Identify issues
Now that you have a process for regular customer feedback, you need to review responses and identify any red flags. The great thing is you can often fix these before they become full-blown issues…which is why we get regular feedback from our clients! Yay!
During our weekly staff meetings, we measure compliments and complaints, which again allows us to discuss any potential problems and solve them before they become full-blown headaches. Oftentimes this results in a change in how we communicate to our clients or how we deliver a service.
Be human
Want to know what else makes a company great? Humanity. Give a shit about your clients; take the time to connect with them and listen. Care about what is going on in their lives outside of work and build a relationship. People do business with people they like.
Seth Godin advised in his blog, treat people better than the minimum required to get through the day. And you’ll need to trust your people to do what’s right.
If you need help building the tools, we can help.
