Going One on One With Your Customers For Profits

An article focusing on your relationship with your customers and guiding you on going one on one with your customers for profits.

The best way to create a loyal and happy-to-buy-whatever-you’re-selling customer base, you need to work hard to create good relationships with them on an individual level. It’s true: individual attention works better than any other marketing technique you can use. Here are some ways to provide this sort of attention, even when you have a large customer base to accommodate:

1. Encourage Your Customers to Give You Feedback

This is done easily enough. You can print “let us know what you think!” and then provide a phone number, email or website address (that points to a contact form) that they can use on the sales receipt.

In addition to this, especially if you are doing business primarily over the Internet, you can send a follow up email asking for the customer’s feedback or ideas about the product they have just purchased. Amazon does this regularly and it has worked out quite well for them.

2. Respond to Feedback (Positive and Negative) Personally

A quick email to customers who send in feedback goes a long way to endearing you to your buyers. We aren’t talking about generic mass emails. We’re talking about individual responses to every piece of feedback you get. The response doesn’t need to be lengthy—it just needs to be personalized.

3. Keep Up On Reviews

Keeping track of what people say about you on public spaces (review sites, blogs, etc) is important. The experts at www.reputation.com are adamant that responding to public review is the key to both managing your online reputation as well as endearing you to customers. Remember, even negative reviews can be turned into positive press for your business if you handle them correctly.

4. Offer Incentive for Communicating With You

Reward people for sharing feedback with you. The easiest and most profitable way to do this is to send the customer a coupon for a percentage off of a future purchase. This is something else that Amazon does. It’s also a common practice for department stores.

5. Remember Details

You would be amazed at how much good will and loyalty a five dollar gift code for your business (or gift card if you have a brick and mortar company) sent out to someone on his (or her) birthday will get you. Does that sound too good to be true? Starbucks does this and it seems to be working out pretty well for them.

These are just five things that you can do to increase customer loyalty and prove that you truly valuable the relationship you have with each customer as a person (as opposed to a wallet with feet).