As any business owner can tell you, customers are what keep a venture running. Given this, you need to do more than just ensuring the quality of products that drive customer satisfaction. You also need to strengthen your relationship with your customers by continually ensuring valuable interactions with your brand.
There are a lot of factors that go into fostering a genuine connection with customers, a lot of which have to do with how your team collaborates. Brand loyalty takes plenty of work, and it usually entails an effort to improve customer service (CS) as well as workplace culture.
That being said, here are some ways that your team can better connect with customers so that your business can grow to its full potential:
Cultivate a Healthy Team Dynamic
One of the first things you need to focus on is how your team sustains a healthy dynamic. Workplace culture defines the behaviours and attitudes that your team exemplifies, so it’s important to put an emphasis on culture if you want your business to efficiently address your customers’ needs.
With this in mind, note that work cultures driven by honesty and openness are most likely to encourage teamwork and innovation. Both of these qualities are instrumental in boosting customer experience with your brand and therefore aid in business performance.
Keep Your Team Aligned with Purpose
Most companies, especially those in the retail sector, largely rely on customer experience and service to stay competitive. To ensure a good customer experience, your team must operate under an overarching purpose that revolves around the goal of building customer loyalty. Essentially, your team must be aligned with the purpose of keeping customers happy and not just making profits.
It would help to establish a mission statement that encompasses core values and practices that your team can abide by. Overall, your team’s goals of achieving growth must not override the purpose of giving attention to your customers to adequately address their unique needs.
Train Your Team in Communicating Better
The root of good CS lies in the skills of your team members when it comes to communicating with your client base.
To improve your team’s capacity to provide personal and relevant assistance, make sure that they are directly immersed in attending to customers—be it on social media, at the store, or on whichever platform your team conducts operations. It would also help if leaders experience what it’s like to be on the front lines themselves. This will give leaders a better idea of what the job entails and, in turn, allow them to be more hands-on and better collaborate with team members when identifying solutions to customer concerns.
That said, it would help to set clear expectations of what you want your team to achieve when it comes to CS. It would be ideal to establish metrics for efficient communication, the primary focus being effective coordination within the team. Apart from helping your team become better at attending to customers, having good communication skills is essential to building a healthy work culture—in particular, one that values transparency and feedback to improve team operations.
Show Appreciation for Your Customers
On a related note, you could strengthen your customer relationships further by showing your customers how much your team appreciates their patronage.
Simple acts such as sending thank-you cards and personalised notes go a long way in making customers feel valued, which is always a good thing for your business. Other forms of appreciation to consider include customer loyalty discounts, seasonal perks, and holiday greetings that you can add to your products and campaigns.
Focus on the Personal, Not the Transactional
At its core, running a business should be more personal rather than transactional. This means that you should prioritise the human aspect of your brand, which means focusing on personal assistance rather than just selling.
Instead of focusing on sales talk, for example, consider being more conversational regardless of whether customers are inquiring about your offerings, bringing up product issues, or something else. Nobody wants to feel like a mere money machine, so it’s best to approach your customers by inquiring about their needs and how you can provide value to them. This is in contrast to aggressively promoting your product at all times, which is more likely to drive customers away.
Going Above and Beyond Takes Teamwork
Improving the way customers relate to your brand is not the sole effort of a business owner or a handful of executives. In the end, it’s largely about the capabilities of your team or the cohesiveness with which it moves to ensure that customers’ demands are met.
Negative experiences are unavoidable, and it’s impossible for any business to please everyone. Still, it pays to have a team that’s steadfast in remedying problems and finding ways to improve customer experiences further. All in all, this approach is necessary in order to showcase the value of your business and elicit loyalty—both from your customers and the team that’s supporting your goals.
If you want to know more, call us on 1300 551 274 or send an email at team@teamfocusplus.com. We look forward to hearing from you.
