Consumer confidence is trending down which likely comes as no surprise given the state of the economy. With that, we’re seeing fewer people spending money and businesses needing to fight for the limited amount of dollars that are available in their markets.
As your company tries to get ahead in today’s climate, we advise that you put customer communication and satisfaction at the top of your priority list. By over serving your customers, you’ll find that they’ll feel a deeper obligation to do business with you, even as they try to watch their expenditures.
How can you improve how much you satisfy your customers? Several ways, a handful of which we share with you below.
- Treat Customers How You’d Like to Be Treated
There is a golden rule when it comes to customer satisfaction. You might assume that rule is, “The customer is always right.”
While that’s a good rule-of-thumb to lean on, a rule we like better is, “Treat customers how you’d like to be treated.”
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By creating service and communication policies that would make you happy as a customer, you’re going to satisfy the majority of your base. That’s great news because understanding what makes you happy doesn’t take any investment or market research.
All it takes is you being honest about how you’d feel if you were subjected to your company’s workflows and adjusting accordingly.
- Diversity Your Means of Contact
The effectiveness of your customer communication management strategy largely comes down to how easy you make it for customers to connect with you.
Sure, an obvious way to encourage communication might be via phone. For clients that don’t feel comfortable on the phone though, you may want to offer chat support, support through social media, email, and other channels.
The more diversity you offer in your points of contact, the more contact you’ll receive which gives you additional opportunities to resolve problems.
- Make Being Consumer-Centric a Cultural Pillar
Culture in your company can make or break your customer communication and satisfaction goals. After all, if nobody is talking about making customers happy in your office, how likely is your team to manifest that goal in their client interactions?
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Making customer satisfaction a brand pillar comes down to you touting the importance of hyper-serving customers whenever you can. Doing that might include scheduling meetings on the topic or sending out emails to team members outlining customer success stories.
- Manage Your Online Reviews
The average customer trusts online reviews as much as they’d trust a recommendation from a friend or family member. That fact should inspire you to pay close attention to what’s being said about your company online and to service customers that are taking to public platforms to complain.
To get started managing your online reviews, claim your Google and Yelp pages. After, make time to respond to all of the online reviews that pour in, good or bad.
The more proactive you are in communicating with satisfied and dissatisfied customers, the more you’ll come off to prospective consumers as a company that cares about what people think.
- Know Your Products
When customers call for help, they expect you to know more about your products than they do. If that’s not the case, you can bet customers will end up upset and you’ll have a hard time earning their business again.
You might know your products inside and out. But do your employees?
Keep your employees up to date on your products and prepare them for common questions they may get asked during customer conversations. Subscribe to the thought that your team’s product knowledge is only as good as your least educated team member’s understanding of what you’re selling.
- Listen Intently
We can’t harp enough on how much good you can do when communicating with customers just by listening.
Not every customer is going to be as concise as you want them to be when speaking. Despite that, know that there’s always value in what customers are saying and that the more willing you are to let customers vent about their experiences, the better you’ll be able to serve them.
- Don’t Forget About Your Employees’ Satisfaction
It may seem counter-intuitive to focus on employees when you’re trying to make an impact on customer satisfaction. In reality though, how happy your employees are with their jobs will have an impact on how well they’ll treat your customers.
Make sure your employees feel fulfilled in their jobs from compensation and growth angles. Also, let your employees know that if they ever have an issue at work, your doors are always open.
Employees that are invested in their place of business will share their excitement for what they do with your customers which, in turn, will create a better overall service experience.
Customer Communication and Satisfaction Is the Foundation for Success
It’s not a new concept that the happier your customers are, the better your business will do. Today especially though, with competition being fiercer than it has been in years past, it’s worth investing in your customer communication and satisfaction strategies.
By doing that, you create conditions where you can turn passive consumers into loyal evangelists that will not only do repeat business with you but will tout what you do to the people around them.
Do you have additional questions regarding how to best communicate your customers that run deeper than what we’ve covered? If that’s the case, we welcome you to browse through more helpful business articles on our blog.
