Know and serve your customers
In order for businesses to be successful knowing your clients and customers is vital. The thing is - it’s not a one off job - things change all the time and in order for a company to adapt you have to understand how needs are changing and respond to them ahead of time so that you aren’t left behind. We believe passionately about building strong relationships with our clients that last not only across the duration of projects but beyond. We have big plans for the future on how we can bring our client community together so watch this space but for the time being here are some ideas for how you can stay connected to your customers.
Make time to talk to them directly
It might sound like something very obvious to say but talking to your customers directly is hugely beneficial. By this we don’t just mean connecting with them around the project you’re working on but also making time to talk about their business or their lives, understanding any challenges they are facing and pressures they are under. This will help you more easy relate to them and their needs and may spark ideas for different ways you could work or new services you can offer. For example we know a lot of our clients spend their day time actually running their businesses operationally so evening and weekend appointments around childcare provide the flexibility they need to be able to focus on the projects we’re working on at a time to suit them. You could also think not only about your existing customers but also why not check in with previous or prospective clients - after all you never know when a reminder you exist could spark some word of mouth business or a chance chat with a prospective customer might help unlock the reason they aren’t a current client. There’s no need to orchestrate any sophisticated mechanisms for these interactions - it could be simply dropping them an e-mail, asking them for a coffee date or catch up or sending on an article or project that might be of interest to re-engage them.
Hold an event
Constant contact and over-enthusiasm can sometimes feel overbearing, so an event is a good way to provide a relaxed atmosphere for informal feedback. This might be a social event like a drinks party to celebrate a business milestone or seasonal occasion or you might want to think about doing something that adds value to your customers like a Webinar. Open days might also be a good way to attract interest if you have a physical space - I walked past a consultancy business the other day, handing out delicious looking cakes and drinks and there was a whole (socially distanced) line of people outside ready to chat.
Leverage social channels
It’s not uncommon to see people walking along the road glued to their phones and often they’re getting the latest update on their family and friends via social channels. This is a great way to reach out to customers and there are many different ways you can get more of an understanding on their lives and what they might need from you. Make sure you follow them as well as asking them to follow you so you can understand what’s happening in their industries or lives. You could also think about ways of getting feedback via social channels - maybe conducting a quick poll or survey - there are an increasing number of tools being built in to facilitate this.
Ask for feedback and reviews
Public feedback and reviews can be a great driver for business and provide valuable feedback but we also ask for offline reviews at the end of every project or every few months from more regular customers by sending a quick set of questions over to them. This creates a less pressured setting for clients to provide more honest feedback and we can a little more specific in the questions we ask to really understand the highs and lows of the project. Sure if the reviews are positive then it’s great to be able to use them to help promote your services too. If you have a mailing list, support service or your product is software or an application there are various tools that offer easy ways to build in quick requests for feedback like star ratings on transactions or services to give you a regular indicator of your progress.
Dip into your data
Don’t forget to look at any data you collect. The majority of projects we work on have a basic level of analytics set up measuring some of the fundamental interactions that customers have with websites and social media channels. If you have it don’t forget to actually look at it and use it. It might be that the majority of your customers are engaging with you via a mobile device or through a particular social media channel, using specific search terms for find you or are based in a specific region. In the majority of businesses there are limited resources so you can harness this information to better target your services and their delivery so that you’re focusing on the areas that maximise your potential.
Think about who they actually are
One useful exercise we can recommend is to actually create mini profiles of different types of customers - sometimes called personas. This is especially useful for more complex business where you might be targeting slightly different characteristics with different services. Even with consumer led business it may be that you can split your customer base by certain demographic characteristics like age or location so that you can target services or products better. You don’t have to spend forever agonising about this but it can be useful to regularly review these profiles and map them against your data to see if anything has changed so that you can spot patterns and work out whether any actions resulted in growth in specific areas.
Some of this might feel a bit daunting but you’re probably doing more of it than you realise already. Some of these things might be fairly intuitive but it may be that if you’re just a little more conscious of some of these things you might uncover some great ideas that could potentially accelerate your business faster and further. As always if you’d like any help or advice on any of these things please do drop us a message!
