Ready for a relationship? Get to know your customers
Nett Administrator
18 February 2008
18 February 2008
Most people have their own view on what it takes to build good customer relationships, from organising birthday cards and golf days to learning clients’ partners’ names. But while these activities show signs of rapport (and sometimes
desperation), they don’t necessarily mean you have a relationship of any real business value.
What is a strong customer relationship?
I always make the link between relationships and business value by defining customer relationships as “an interdependency between a customer and a brand.” There are three ways a brand can have a relationship with its customers:
1. Via a partnership in which your customers come to rely on your brand to develop outcomes.
2. By developing a close connection, so you can influence your customers’ decision-making.
3. Through your ability to provide a customised solution to better fit your customers’ needs.
From the mind to the heart
Brands have traditionally been good at meeting practical needs through products and services. However, now that we’re moving into ‘the relationship era’, brands also need to be good at meeting their customers’ emotional needs.
For a hairdresser, this may mean moving into being a stylist, or creating a special social experience every time a customer visits. For many hotels around the world, it’s about repositioning themselves from a place of accommodation to a spa, or
a place to chill out. For a doctor, this may mean managing patients’ emotional issues as well as being able to treat their disease on a physical level.
From the heart to your bottom line
To deliver customised solutions, a brand needs to recognise its customers as individuals, with unique needs. You will need to gather insights by talking to your customers about how your solution takes them closer to their ideal self and how
they feel about that. When you have sampled the opinions and needs of enough customers, you can identify your segments and pitch a customised offering at them.
For me, the internet has opened up exciting opportunities for building profitable customer relationships. It allows me to develop clear profiles of my customers so I can share customised information with them, or offer them a personal solution
online, based on their profile.
The world wide web is also the perfect medium to deliver a program of decision-making support, so that I am with my customers all the way through the decision-making cycle.
Are you ready for relationships?
Based on real-world experience working with customers large and small, I’ve learnt there are four important values a business needs to adopt to make itself ready for a meaningful relationship.
1. Be transparent: show what’s in it for the customer, and what’s in it for you.
2. Be reliable: always follow through on your promises.
3. Give proof: back up your claims with testimonials and showcases.
4. Get intimate: know what your customers think, and how they feel about what they think.
So before you invite your customers out for yet another boozy and expensive lunch, think about what will really boost your business, and build your relationships from that. Then and only then start memorising the names of their nieces and
nephews.
Comments:
Want to Post a Comment?
Register with NETT and you can download resource packs, comment on blogs and watch a podcast.Register Now
Hi Louise,
Great article on customer relationships and how they make all the difference. As a customer I want to be treated like a real person, not just another number in somebody's system. Businesses that go the extra mile are always going to win my custom.
I strongly agree with what you have said about the advantage going to the business that delivers this customised solution. The doctor who helps to manage the patients emotional issues by providing not just a waiting room but a place of relaxation and peace is going to get me back there when I have a choice between his surgery or the one down the road.
Let's examine just how a medical centre might just do this.
Recently I have had the pleasure of working in a range of pet stores painting pet portraits and I couldn't help notice just how emotional people become when they see a cute rag doll kitten playing with a soft ball, or the irresistibility of many of the modern breeds of small fluffy puppies bringing exclamations of sheer joy to the tune of "oooh how cute, look at him"!
Imagine the joy you would bring to people who are suffering emotionally from their physical aliments, by placing a "pet play pen" in a doctors waiting room. Children would have something to do that is fun and not have read tattered and torn Who Weekly mags or watch some boring soap on the wall mounted TV.
OK we might get into some trouble with people with allegies and there is always the space factor as most waiting rooms tend to be over crowded (especially when I decide to visit) but I think you get the idea.
Another way to develop customer relationships as you have suggested is the providing of testimonials from happy customers.
This is not only a great way to boost your potential customers confidence in trusting you, it is also an opportunity at reinforcing the loyalty factor with those who provide their appraisals. A customer who is truly happy, who provides a glowing review or testimonial is going to be twice as likely to remain loyal compared to the customer who has not experienced this emotional exchange.
This being so, it would make perfect sense to have in place a systematic way of engaging your satisfied customers in the review or testimonial process. If this system would allow the customer to not only write the testimonial but also make it easy for them to pass the review on to interested friends, then you would have a double impact upon the growth and retention of your customer base.
Such a system does exist. It is web based and has just launched in Australia. It is appropriately called "Happy Customers".
Yes I will also be transparent here as you have suggested at point 1. I am the owner of said website Happy Customers, and have developed this site to help small business operators to build their business by systematic word of mouth, in an affordable manner.
As they say, they "there is no better sales person, than a happy customer" so I figured it was time we had something like this available for the people of Australia to make it easy to spread the word on good businesses that have impressed them.
As consumers we are real people and we need to be treated respectfully by having our concerns listened to. By providing the opportunity for customer feedback we are not only able to make our customers feel more cared for but also set ourselves up to be able to make a difference with how we treat them the next time the come to us, based on a greater understanding of what means to truly "be the customer".
Greg Gillespie, founder of Happy Customers.