When a salesman I regularly buy from left his last job, he took a copy of his client list.
See what he did there? He owned the relationship he had with me and all of his customers so that when it came time for him to move on, he brought most of us with him.
How can you be sure to own your customer relationships so they don’t go walking out the door with your salespeople when they leave?
Use these four business management tips to ensure you own the customer relationship.
1. Create a Customer Success Culture
It all starts at the top. If everyone in your organization is responsible for WOWing your customers, customers will stick with you.
They’ll stay with you even when the salesperson who brought them onboard isn’t there any more.
Just like the old expression of that “shit rolls downhill,” so too does good behavior and culture. Create an amazing workplace for your staff and you’ll see how that flows right on through to your customers, and how it translates into customer retention.
2. Improve Customer Experience
Customer experience is a measure of how happy a customer is with your company. If you keep them satisfied at every touchpoint within your company, it’s easier to keep them. But how do you know if they’re happy?
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Find out what they’re thinking and talking about
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Determine how they’re interacting with your company and your products
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Review your metrics and find solutions to bottlenecks
Once you’ve got all this information, it’s time to implement some solutions and tweaks to keep them coming back. Lather, rinse, and repeat. Do so periodically to keep things fresh and agile.
3. Use a Contact Management System
No sense in improving your customer success culture and experience if your staff can’t keep track of your customer’s contact information. A good customer relationship management system (CRM) helps you not only keep track of contact information, but also helps you maintain those relationships through automated follow-up reminders and more.
Another way to increase the impact of your CRM system is to give all of your staff access to it. This makes all of your organization responsible for maintaining contact information, which fosters the customer success culture throughout your organization (don’t forget to check out the contact management system we offer.)
Everyone is now involved in the customer relationship, not just those on the front-lines.
4. Use Multiple Channels to Interact With Customers
Don’t force your customers into using only one method of communication, or only let them talk to one person in your organization. Enable live chats, multiple channels of communication, and give customers a chance to interact with different people within your organization.
In fact, choosing the right contact management system can go a long way towards ensuring customers are able to engage with different people throughout your organization.
Keeping your organization fully engaged in your customer relationships will ensure that you keep those customers even when your organization and staff change.
Have you tried any of these productivity hacks to keep your organization engaged with your customers?