Customer Relations
Catch'em and keep 'em
Most new web sites are designed with the aim of acquiring new clients.
It is estimated that the cost of acquiring a new customer is 5x the cost of retaining an existing one.
Customer loyalty, repeat business and referrals are the most effective, and cost-effective, way of growing your business.
Customer Acquisition
First impressions count. How often have you taken an instant dislike to someone without really knowing why? Once interested, your potential customer or client wants to get to know you better. Helping them to find out about you, quickly and easily, is one way in which you can endear yourself to them. If they are still interested, they will start to engage with you. How you relate to your customers starts the instant they land on your site.
Customer Experience
Your potential customer's experience of you begins even before they become a customer. Establishing trust and rapport with them should be one of your web site's primary goals. By anticipating what questions they might have, and providing answers to them, you can reassure customers that you understand their concerns and are willing to address them. It also makes it easier for them to compare your offering with those of your competitors, so the more comprehensive the information you provide, the better.
Customer Service
In some cases Customer Service starts even before the first sale or contract. Responding to potential new customers in a timely, and pertinent manner, helps customers make the right decision. It may be that you are not what they are looking for, but if your response is helpful, they will have had a positive experience and learnt more about you. This increases the chances of them becoming a customer and recommending you.
Whether considering a new transaction or enquiring about a current or previous one, the customer journey through that process needs to be as smooth as possible. Well designed web forms and your FAQ or Knowledgebase page should answer as many questions as possible, leaving only the more complex enquiries to be answered manually.
The more information your enquiry form gathers, the better able you will be to gather the details needed and form an answer before responding in a personal way to each of those customers.
The impact of poor service on customer relations
An unhappy customer will tell at least 9 people about their bad experience. Reputation consultant, Andy Beal, summarises the impact of happy versus unhappy customers, and their impact on your business, in the infographic in this article.
Worse than that, over 90% of those that are unhappy don't complain, they simply never deal with you again. That means you may never know why they stopped buying your goods or using your services. At least those that do complain, those with legitimate complaints who have their complaint handled well, are likely to be even more loyal because they feel confident in the way you do business.
Customer Retention
The happy customer who understands what your business offers is a good for business. People are more likely to act upon referrals from people they like and trust, so their happiness is the best way to build your business.
Rewarding and incentivising loyal customers keeps you on their radar. The better educated they are with regard to what you offer, the greater their ability to influence others to buy from you. Customer Relations Management software integration is very important for growing businesses. By creating an Active Customer Retention Strategy as part of your web site design, you will know what you want from your CRM software from the outset.
Segmentation
When communicating with your customers, it helps to be able to target your marketing efforts so they reach those it is the most relevant to. The better you know and understand your customers, the better placed you are to engage with them effectively. From the outset, you should consider how to capture and segment the information you have on your customers.
Under the Data Protection Act you must have permission to use the information your customers give you. They are entitled to know what information you hold on them, as well as to be able to edit that information or have you delete it. One of the easiest ways to manage this type of data is set up Mailing Lists which make it easy for customers to opt in, opt out, and edit that information.
Dealing with Complaints
The more pre-sale information you provide, the lower the risk of customers finding their purchase "not as expected". Complaints are often the result of what you are offering not matching your customer's expectations. A clear Returns and Refund Policy as part of your Terms and Conditions is also recommended if you sell physical goods.
Think of customer complaints as part of a process which allows you to understand what went wrong within your business, rather than as a personal affront. Turn the situation into an opportunity to improve your understanding of the customer experience and make any necessary changes in the light of their experience.
Have a system in place to deal with complaints. Allow the complainant at least one open-ended long text section after any essential closed ended questions, where they can vent their spleen. That can reveal important insights into how the complaint arose, making it easier to resolve.
Useful Links
HubSpot's article on Customer Retention
