You may be proud of the vast number of clients your business has – but, to put it bluntly, your clients could not care less. It doesn’t matter to them if you have five clients in your portfolio or fifty; they all expect the very best treatment. Thinly spreading a limited amount of care and attention over everyone will not do; you have to build relationships with your clients through effective customer relationship management. Here are four important rules that will help you achieve this.
1. Engage in regular communication to build a fulfilling, trusting relationship.
A strong customer relationship requires frequent communication with the ability to listen to the client and understand the situation in full, rather than simply talking at them and viewing them as a sales target. Creating this dialogue on a regular basis through email, phone calls, or face-to-face meetings in the office shows customers that they can rely upon you and be direct with you. The latter is preferable as it much friendlier than a phone call and offers the chance for a more personal and open discussion.
2. Understand clients on a personal level by building deeper connections.
Getting these individual clients to communicate openly with you is a great start, but if you really want to connect with them and show you understand their needs, it pays to make a bigger effort. Regular contact regarding the developments of your own business model is great, but the relationship is a two-way street. Try and engage with customers’ current aspirations through reading their newsletters or, better yet, visiting their place of work. Making the extra effort to visit them on their terms indicates your company is caring while creating a more even balance of power.
3. Consider the benefits of holistic communication for improved business strategy.
The term holistic communication sounds like a psychological buzzword spouted at a corporate seminar, but it can have an impact on the way a company deals with customer relationship management as a whole. This holistic approach teaches the importance of efficient communication through a shared understanding, and this is important when learning how to deal with customers and developing a business wide CRM strategy. Every employee needs to be on the same page as relationship managers to ensure that a client always receives the treatment and service they expect.
4. Make the most of multiple resources to improve your company’s attitude to CRM.
Following on from this idea of holistic approaches and relationship management being a company-wide priority, it is important to manage resources across departments and make the most of available tools to improve interactions with customers. This can be as simple as using customer prioritization to allocate crucial clients to the right managers, identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) to understand customer needs and solutions, and using technological resources to create customer feedback channels.
Simple steps to better customer relationship management.
By taking the time to regularly engage in one-to-one dialogues with clients in the office and their own places of business, viewing them as individuals with personal goals and needs, considering holistic communication for a business-wide understanding of CRM, and making the most of the tools at your disposal, you can keep all your clients happy – whether there are five or fifty – and build on relationships rather than risk losing them.