BUSINESS FOR VETERANS By Barbara Eldridge www.mindmasters.com
Customer Relationship Management
It is all about bringing customers back, and about sending them away happy – happy enough to share their experience with others. The relationship you want with customers takes “management” and there are long lists of tips you can find all over the internet as to what that means. Here’s my suggested list: 1. Values provide a basis for how you want to show up to your customers. They are translated into behaviors that affect everything from how you answer the phone, to how you respond to customer requests to how you follow up with them. One friend shared how he and his wife stopped at a restaurant and asked the hostess if they could see a menu before they decided to enter. The Hostess’ response was to tell them to go look it up on the internet. Not a very good customer experience. Know what values and behaviors you want showing up in your business.
Business is about relationships. In the rush to get something done, small businesses owners often find themselves with less than perfect outcomes. In all our business relationships, as business owners hire people or are hired to perform a service or deliver a finished product. Usually the cause of a challenge is a lack of a clear agreement of the work to be done or results to be achieved. So how do you create relationships that work? Over that last few weeks several articles and books have crossed my desk that deal with the relationships we develop with customers. Of all the ways to keep a business growing, increasing the frequency of interactions we have with clients is probably one of the most important. We would all love to boast a long list of loyal customers; when we increase the effectiveness of all of our business practices, the list increases. To sustain profitability and customer loyalty, offering discounts or cutting prices may bring in new customers, but keeping them requires a different level of customer service. Good customer service is the lifeblood of any business. 44
WWW.HomelandMagazine.com / MAY 2022
2. Organize your business around your customer. Design your organizational structure around positions and activities that are necessary to sustain good customer service, rather then product/service focused. Use your strengths in other areas that you can leverage to help your customers address a challenge perhaps unrelated to your product or service. 3. Take the time to build trust with your customers. Trust means doing what you say you will do, because you put customer needs into the relationship. Trust shows up in the reliability of your service, doing what you say you will do. There are many ways to keep customers coming back, use technology to enhance the relationship, but look for ways to customize it. I read where Starbucks can serve their coffee 19,000 ways – that obviously has created loyal customers! Barbara Eldridge has built a solid reputation as a Success strategies specialist, within industry and business over the past 40 years. Her unique message, since starting Mind Masters 30 years ago for entrepreneurs and small business owners, continually stresses vision, purpose and values as the key elements of business philosophy. www.mindmasters.com
