You may be a business owner, but you are also a customer. From the supermarket where you buy your groceries and the coffee shop where you get your caffeine fix, to the bank where you have your accounts and the mechanic who takes care of your car — you have plenty of experience being on the other side of the cash register.
This is why, when thinking about keeping your own clients as happy as possible, it’s a good idea to think about what bothers you when you are wearing your customer hat — and vowing to never do the same. With that in mind, check out the following three ways to not bug your customers, and keep them as loyal clients:
Eliminate Long Wait Times on the Phone.
When a potential or existing customer calls your company to ask a question about a product or check on an existing order, it is imperative to help them as soon as possible. Going back to your own experiences, your time is valuable, and if you resent being left on hold for minutes on end, so will your clients. One way to serve your customers swiftly is to invest in internal technology that is equipped with the fastest mobile processors on the market today. For instance, the Snapdragon mobile platforms from Qualcomm are incredibly fast and efficient and offer a number of benefits including superior connectivity, powerful hardware and more. The Snapdragon mobile platform is also gentle on power usage, which means you and your employees can answer calls all day long without worrying about running out of battery juice.
Reply Quickly When Customers Reach Out.
If you routinely get a number of emails from customers, do everything in your power to be sure you, or one of your team members, replies as quickly as possible. While the old rule-of-thumb allowed up to 48 hours to reply to emails, most shoppers expect a reply within one business day, if not much sooner. The last thing you want is for a new customer to send an email asking if a product comes in a specific color and, after not hearing back after a day or two, decides to order the product from your competition. Set up an automated reply that lets each customer know that you received his or her email and will get back in a certain amount of time, and then follow through on this promise.
Watch the Upselling and Cross-selling.
If you have been in a shoe store buying a new pair of running shoes and the cashier asks you if you need any athletic socks to go with them, you have just experienced upselling. If he inquires if you want to add a pair of running shorts and a t-shirt to your order, this is cross-selling. In either case, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it, and it’s important to be sure your team is not needlessly bugging your customers. Never try to upsell or cross-sell a client who is angry or frustrated, and don’t be pushy about it. In the grand scheme of things, upselling tends to be more successful than cross-selling, so if you insist on using this tactic, train your employees to be laid back about it and never make a customer feel bad for passing on the additional purchase.
Competition is tough in the business world these days, so it’s more important than ever to take extra-good care of your customers. By answering their questions as quickly as you can, avoiding long wait times and being very prudent in your use of upselling, your customers will feel appreciated, valued and more likely to become a loyal client.
