The Art of Customer Relationship Building in the Digital Age

Customer Relationship Building is the backbone of building brand awareness and creating a positive relationship with your customer.

Customers are your lifeblood. If you hope to beat out the competition, you need to forge and maintain solid customer relationships in order to earn repeat business and keep your doors open.

In the modern business world, though, most companies need some type of online presence to help define their brand and be seen as a major player in the market. In particular, through your website, you need to show the world who you are and provide a way for customers to engage with your company.

The following four tips will help you reach your goals. By following this advice, you’ll be able to leverage a number of digital channels to create deeper relationships with those most responsible for your ongoing success.

1. Adopt the Right Mindset

For customer relationship building to be more than a buzzword, companies must actually take this process seriously, which many times requires buy-in from the top. Additionally, a priority must be placed on not just halfheartedly reacting to customer issues, but in truly working to cultivate customer loyalty that will make people want to engage with your brand. Only with a complete understanding of the importance of customer building can the process actually be advanced in earnest.

2. Project a Unified Brand

Some businesses project their brand on social media constantly, while others rarely interface with the world beyond showing off their company cars or delivery trucks featuring their logo. Regardless of your approach, the key aspect is to show consistency.

If your brand is down-home, warm and friendly, then you’ll want to project that image across a multitude of digital channels, including your website and social media pages. Likewise, if you want the world to see you as a cut-and-dry professional, then use that as the backdrop of everything you do.

This way, whether you’re a baker or a roofer, the customers you’re trying to win over and retain will feel as though they understand the company on an emotional level. It may seem like a small thing, but branding is key to relationship building — and people tend to want to do business with companies they know and trust.

3. Provide Clear Contact Channels

For a customer to request service or log a complaint, they must be able to reach you. This is why it’s key to have clear, easy-to-find contact information on your company website and/or social media channels. Be it a “contact us” form, phone number or email address, make it easy for customers to get in touch with your business.

Nowadays, while some companies may sell their good and services primarily on Instagram or Pinterest, make sure it’s easy for customers to connect with you. Additionally, try to be as responsive as possible to public comments and/or private messages on Facebook or Twitter. Truthfully, if you have a presence on any or all social networks, avid users will expect a response.

4. Offer Personalized Service

In business, it’s vital for ownership to provide personalized service to their customers. In truth, people want to know their voice is being heard via direct one-on-one communication with a company rep — not just an automated email reply or a link to some generic FAQ page.

Implementing a cloud call center, which provides you with the ability to deliver quick, consistent responses through popular digital channels, can be a solution to this challenge. Better yet, this type of support can have a positive impact on customer satisfaction scores. Indeed, nothing beats a personal touch.

3 Key Ways to Build Stronger Customer Relationships

Business, especially online, is driven by customer relationships… Here are 3 Stupid Simple Ways to build stronger relationships with your customers.

Valuable customer relationships don’t just happen overnight or after a single interaction. In fact, many companies have dozens of support agents putting in the extra work to keep these relationships healthy.

Through direct communication, exceptional customer service and a promise to keep data safe, small-business owners can foster stronger relationships with customers; after all, there’s value in having loyal, repeat customers continuing to come through your door.

Here are some ideas on how you can win over your customers.

1. Protect their Crucial Data

When data is compromised, there’s oftentimes a direct impact on consumer trust, loyalty and the overall perceptions of just how serious a company takes security. According to a survey conducted by Gemalto, 31 percent of consumers have at some point been a victim of a data breach.

Meantime, 75 percent of those same consumers said they don’t believe the companies they do business with take data security seriously, while another 64 percent indicated they wouldn’t shop with a brand if their proprietary information was ever compromised or stolen. Of course, both scenarios point to lost customer loyalty.

But business owners can better protect consumer data — after all, there are no certainties in life — with online data backup systems like MozyPro. For example, the cloud-based software allows small-business owners or leaders to seamlessly manage data backups via the cloud, further increasing customer loyalty by providing an invaluable service at an affordable cost.

2. Provide Exceptional Customer Service

Customers value consistency over just about anything else, meaning they expect the checkout process and/or sales interactions with staff to be the same each and every time. To that end, 75 percent of consumers said they expect a level of consistency when engaging with support agents via phone, email, social media or in-person, according to a Salesforce survey.

Of course, not only does providing quality service and support help foster stronger relationships between businesses and consumers, but it can also boost your company’s bottom line, too. According to New Voice Media, an estimated $62 billion is lost by U.S. businesses each year following poor customer experiences.

But at the other end of the spectrum, research also indicates today’s consumers will show their loyalty by paying more for products and services sold by their favorite brands that provide exceptional customer service. Of course, from live chat and social media to traditional phone and email support, there are countless ways to provide top-notch satisfaction.

3. Connect through Email Marketing

Considered a measurable and cost-effective strategy, email marketing is a tried-and-true tactic that small-business owners and leaders can implement to strengthen consumer relationships. No matter your business niche, whether you work as an SEO pro or graphic designer, you need to tailor your email marketing strategy to make it your own.

Indeed, email marketing campaigns offer a simple and effective means to communicate with your customers. And, in many cases, this marketing strategy only costs pennies on the dollar. In fact, emails marketing campaigns bring in $40 for every $1 spent. Now that’s some positive ROI.

Email marketing also plays a vital role in brand awareness. When your company’s emails collect in your customers’ inboxes, you’re ultimately building value by staying top-of-mind with your audience. But most importantly, the next time consumers decide to purchase a specific product or service, there’s a good chance they’ll turn to you first.

Built to Last

For almost every type of business, nothing is more important than its customers. But without a loyal and active customer base clamoring for your products or services, you’ll soon be left high and dry.

Fortunately, the principles of customer relationship building are simple. First, you must prioritize the customer experience and value how much they bring to the table. Then you need to consistently showcase your company to the world and make it easy for anyone to connect and engage with you. Finally, you need to nail the interaction component by delivering high-quality, personalized service through the most advanced platform possible.

Just by doing all this correctly, you will be well ahead of the game. Your old customers will become more confident that they have made the right choice, first-time buyers will come back for more, and prospects will begin to recognize your inherent value. In the end, all of this will do wonders to build and strengthen your foundation for success.