Take Advantage of Customer Relationship Management Software
If your company isn’t already taking advantage of a customer relationship management (CRM) software, you should start by implementing one immediately. For those still holding out, let’s just consider the advantages you can gain from automating your customer relationship management.
A CRM system allows you to:
- Store large quantities of data, including information about your customer demographics, allowing you to clearly visualize your customer profile.
- Automate away all of the most time-consuming tasks, leaving you free to get back to running your business.
- Make online appointments, allowing your customers a better and easier experience.
- Communicate with your customer database while customizing your message based on their individual characteristics.
- Streamline your customer profile to make it easily accessible across your entire business team.
As you can see, CRM software gives your business a clear advantage, one that – we would argue – no company can afford to forego. It simply makes no sense for you not to use a CRM system to help you build and keep track of all your customer relationships under one roof.
” For those who work with a CRM platform, it’s hard to imagine a world without it. If you love structure and organisation, an advantage CRM software offers is that it can keep everything related to managing your customer relationships — data, notes, metrics, and more — in one place. ”
Pay Attention To What Your Analytics Are Telling You
Chances are, you have collected a fair share of data surrounding your customer behavior, but are you actually listening to what that data is telling you?
Analytics – when done correctly – can afford you valuable insight, which can help you build a comprehensive customer persona. And if you want to connect to your audience, you have to understand them on a granular level.
Much like your marketing strategy, your approach to nurturing customers should be data driven. And the better you understand your customers, the better you can shape your brand to build a meaningful relationship with them.
Keep in mind that each segment of your customer demographics will have its own set of pain points and challenges. Understanding these will help you approach these customers in a more natural and personal way.
Retain Your Current Customers
Acquiring new leads and customers is time consuming and expensive, especially compared to customer retention. How much more expensive? It costs, on average, five times as much to convert a new client than it does to retain an existing one.
Sure, growing your clientele always sounds alluring, but are you dedicating enough time and energy on keeping your current clients satisfied and returning for more of your services?
In terms of revenue, it’s accepted that about 20% of your customer base is going to be responsible for upwards of 80% of your total numbers. And to add to those staggering statistics, consider that returning customers are likely to spend nearly 70% more on your products and services compared to first-time customers.
All of this is to say, that increasing your customer retention even marginally can have a large impact on your revenue.
” Did you know that it costs five times as much to attract a new customer, than to keep an existing one? The first rule of any business is to retain customers and build a loyal relationship with them, and thereby avoid customer acquisition costs. ”
Keep Your Emails Useful and Highly Personalized
One way of retaining and engaging with existing customers is through your email list. For starters, you have a clear advantage addressing this group of customers since they have opted into receiving communications from you in the first place.
But, then again, not all email communications are created equal. Simply put, you should not use your email list to spam your customers. And to prevent this from becoming the case, it helps to keep your email communications as personalized and valuable to the reader as possible.
To get an idea of what that means, try doing an exercise in which you compose an email to one specific customer. See how this changes the tone and content of your email. Your challenge will be to try and recreate that process for all of your email communications.
An active CRM system, as we already discussed, can be a valuable source of information at this stage, especially when it’s working with plenty of rich and well-segmented data.
You should utilize this information to offer value and a personalized touch to your emails when and wherever possible.
Get Active On Social Media
Social media is quickly becoming a standard mode of connection between consumers and their favorite brands. So if you’re looking to increase your customer relationships, this is the prime place to do it.
Not only can social media be used to create more awareness around your brand, but it can also serve as a direct line of communication to resolve customer complaints and issues. In fact, most customers have grown to expect this type of service from their favorite businesses.
Needless to say, your brand should have a social media presence in 2021, but how you use that platform is what can set you apart from the competition.
Take advantage of social media as a direct line to your customers, and make it your priority to engage with them in a way that helps solve their problems. This approach is much more valuable for nurturing your existing and future clients than simply promoting yourself and advertising your offers.
Resolve Your Customers’ Issues On First Contact
How effective is your team at resolving customer issues on the first try? Do they have the authority and ability to fix the issues that arise on the spot? Or are your unsatisfied customers forced to bounce around across departments or make subsequent attempt to resolve their issues?
This is referred to as the first contact resolution (FCR) rate, and it has a deep impact when it comes to retaining your customers and keeping them loyal to your business. Taking your customers’ issues seriously means valuing their time and, in turn, them as a client.
It should come as no surprise, that a majority of customers care more about how much your value their time than they do about the type of service you can offer.
Remain Helpful To Your Customers
Of course it’s very important to attend to your customers’ complaints when they arise, but you can go a step further and offer your audience help proactively through useful content.
What is referred to as “content marketing,” is the approach of growing your audience by offering free, valuable content. And the more valuable your content can be, the more effective your strategy.
Yet, to produce valuable content, you must first understand your customer’s problems, and offer a useful solution. In this sense, you aren’t selling your readers a thing. In fact, you’re educating them and offering the service for free.
Keep this strategy going and you’ll build trust from your audience and establish yourself as an expert within your field.
Nurturing Your Customer Relationships Pays Off!
As you can see, nurturing your customer relationships can greatly increase the success of your business operation. So much so, that you simply cannot afford not to dedicate time and effort to this cause. We hope these tips help you strengthen your customer relationships and build a meaningful exchange of information, which will not only benefit your clients, but also help you grow a better, more successful brand.
A particularly important aspect of developing customer relationships is your willingness to spend time understanding their perspective and pain points. Putting yourself in their unique shoes can give you the type of insight you need to take your business from a company to a brand with a loyal following.
Contact Bold Eye Media & Let’s Build Your Client Nurturing System!