Do Your Customers Feel Like They’re the Most Important People in the World?
Providing excellent customer service may be one of the most important things you’ll do in your business. After all, if your customer service is poor, you’ll lose current customers and perhaps future customers too when they find out.
Your business wouldn’t be here without someone to buy your products, services or recommendations. That’s a fact. Learning to make your customers feel important so they feel super-special is part of the job as a business owner and should be a major goal going forward.
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7 Simple Ways To Make Your Customers Feel Important
Listen Carefully
The more you listen to your customers, the better. When a customer contacts you due to a problem, let them talk first. You want to listen to what they have to say and let them know you’re listening by making the right sounds, giving the right looks (if in person) and parroting back to them what you think they meant by what they said in your own words.
Most customers tell you what they want in the first minute. You can listen to them enough to hear between the lines so that you can create more products and services that make them feel as if you can read their mind.
Respond Enthusiastically
When a customer reaches out to you, always respond enthusiastically in a way that will make them feel like special clients. If you can’t afford to pay someone to do customer service for you, get a good ticketing system that will answer them fast.
Always thank them, not just after purchase but also within your email autoresponder messages, on social media, and in your blog posts. If you go live on Facebook, thank them there too. Thank them often and in public. When they know they’re important to you because you told them, they’ll feel important too.
Make It Easy for Them to Connect with You
Don’t make it hard for your customers to contact you. Let people respond to your emails to them. Not only that, invite them to. The emails you send to your audience should allow for replying and not be a no-reply email address. Big corporations do use these but as a smaller business, you’ll turn away too many people if you do it too. Also, tell them about all your social media profiles and where to find you.
Study Them
Learn everything you can about your audience. The more you can mirror their values, likes, and dislikes, the more they’re going to feel a connection with you that takes it that one step closer to making them feel like VIPs.
The thing is, while you want to say that the customer is always right, sometimes they’re not. Sometimes customer service feels like harassment. Even so, you need to put it in perspective and try to listen to what they have to say and what their complaint is first. Try to listen through the anger and find the solution. Create policies that make sense but be willing to bend them. If someone is extra angry, you may be better off giving them a refund.
Ask Them Questions
Always include your customers in your future product development by asking them questions. You may want to make the question a choice between three new exciting products that you’ve worded differently, or get them to help you choose which cover you put on your new book. They’ll feel involved and important and it’s one of the most effective ways to make customers feel special.
Follow Up Fast after Purchase
When your customer purchases from you, follow up fast. They should get scheduled emails right away from you that ask questions, give instructions, thank them, and more. If you sell an expensive item, you might want to call them to thank them for their purchase and ask them if they have questions about their purchase a few days after they get it. This might be challenging, but even if you only leave a message, they’re going to feel like they are a valued client.
Live Up to Your Promises
If you make a promise, live up to it. If your sales page says that your product does XYZ, it needs to do XYZ without any problems. When there are problems, fix them as soon as your customer points them out and thank them for it. Setting up standards of service that your customers can read before and after buying and that you can use as your basis for how you provide a solution to their problem will help tremendously. Ensure your return policy, terms of service, and expectations are very clear to your customers.
Free Checklist: The Top 10 Business Mistakes To Avoid
It isn’t really that hard to make your customers feel important. You just need to offer them real solutions for their problems that are easy to implement and well put together. Listen to them, provide what they need, and follow up to ensure that everything is working as planned.
When dealing with customers in the business world, we all make mistakes. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t. Although mistakes are going to happen, you can avoid the common business mistakes and other pitfalls that are lurking around the corner. Download my free checklist, The Top 10 Business Mistakes and avoid the false moves and slipups that even veteran entrepreneurs and business owners make.