5
Ways To Communicate More Effectively With Your Customers in 2011January 2011
The easiest way to
strengthen the relationships you have with your customers is to keep in touch
with them on a regular basis with a variety of different strategies. Here are
five ways to get you started:
1. Send
your customers an opt-in e-newsletter or a snail-mail letter, or both. In terms
of frequency you need to strike a balance, not so often that you irritate them
and not so infrequently that they forget who you are. Don’t overwhelm them with information and
special offers either – keep it simple, 2-3 points is enough including a
personal introduction. You should sound as if you are writing to a friend, not
a mass mailing list. Most businesses implement this step and stop there
thinking their job is done. Actually this is just the beginning.
2. The
next step is to use social media to keep in touch with your customers. Become
their contact on LinkedIn and follow their status updates, commenting
occasionally. Follow them on Twitter and actively engage them in conversation
from time to time. You could also remember them on Follow Friday or retweet
their content. Become their fan or friend on Facebook. Comment on their posts
or share interesting content with your circle of friends. The key elements here
are engagement and reciprocity.
3. The
most fundamental of all forms of communication is also the most powerful –
person to person contact, such as picking up the phone to talk to someone. I
did this recently with a client I hadn’t heard from in the longest time only to
find that he had been a serious car accident. He was grateful for the call and
appreciated having someone to talk to. I made a note on his file to follow up
with him again in a month. Reach out to one of your customers today by picking
up the phone.
4. Remember
your customers on their special occasions. You should be logging this
information about each client in your customer database anyway, so why not act
on it? This could be something as simple as sending out a birthday or
anniversary card or e-card once a year. But why stop there, life is full of
milestone events, for example, if you know they’ve just had a baby you could
send a stuffed toy and a gift card or if they just got promoted you could offer
to take them out to lunch to celebrate. Sometimes it’s a sad milestone event
such as the passing of a loved one, but don’t let that stop you – the fact that
you took the time to remember will make all the difference.
5. Send
them a hand written note to say thank you or even just hello. In our electronic
age the fact that you made the effort to write something meaningful to them
will make you stand out from the crowd. It will look even more professional if
you have personalized stationary or note cards with your initials or logo on
them. A small investment considering the impact it makes.
Ultimately you need
to show your customers that you genuinely care about them as people first. As
the famous quote by John Maxwell says “People don’t care how much you know
until they know how much you care.”
©2010-2011 Narges Nirumvala
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