On today’s episode of Solopreneur Success Strategies, it is all about the customer. Are you focused on your current customers? Developing your customer retention rate can increase your bottom line easily. If you focus on your current customers rather than trying to get new customers ever day, you can recommend or upsell new products or services to your current customers.
It is 10X harder to acquire a new customer than to sell new products or services to your existing customers. Connect and follow up with your current customers to make sure they are happy with your customer service or there are ways to improve your customer service.
By spending more time on your current customers, you can increase your profits without extra advertising.
For more on customer acquistion and retention, join The Business of At Home Business community at http://boahbtips.com/members.
The old way at looking at the customer business relationship was that the customer made the decision on whether they bought your product or service based on cold hard facts, features and benefits.
The emotions of the customer are playing in as a greater factor in purchase decision making than previously thought.
Behavioral economics has shown that rational decision-making accounts for approximately one-third of people’s decisions and behavior. Feelings influence engagement and engagement boosts sales, as engaged customers buy 90% more frequently and spend 60% more per transaction. byUnlock the Key to Customer Engagement with Virtual Reality
As new technology and our use of the internet is making how we connect more intimate with a business (or more anonymous as “Fake News” and social media have no accountability for slander or negative reviews). A customer can instantly register a review on your business positive or negative depending on their experience in all of the social media platforms. They don’t have to pick up the phone to complain to an agent. A negative review can be spread 10x faster than a positive.
According to Jay Baer in Forbes article, a business should respond to any complaint on social media whether true or untrue.
So what is a business to do to create the engagement and emotional connection that the customer wants?
A few ways to engage and connect with your customer include:
1/ Connecting your business with an Influencer that your customer follows
An oldie but a goodie is that we, as customers, pay attention to the hero’s or heroines that we admire who tell us how wonderful is a new detergent soap or insurance company.
Today, we have new influencers we follow and some of them are celebrities but more often now, it can be influential people on social media that we follow and we pay attention to their recommendations. There are brands who pay celebrities to use and post an Instagram picture using the product now. There are brands who see the large engaged followers of a celebrity in the media and they offer a product line to them to create in that celebrity’s style.
All you have to do is have a look at the Instagram accounts for Levi’s, Mercedes Benz with 8.1 million followers or Levi’s with 9.1 million followers or Ben and Jerry’s (benandjerry’s) with 600,000 followers and you can see how simple photos can still be engaging for any business.
Even a small business should have great customer service. A loyal customer will buy from you again and again if you provide a great experience. Just something as simple as support@yourwebsite.com can be an easy way for a customer to connect to you on a personal level. I have discussed great customer service over on my youtube channel Solopreneur Success Strategies channel at http://jgtips.com/youtube if you want to get a few ideas.
4/Keep up to date on the new technology coming for customer business relationship
For example, Virtual Reality technology is coming to the customer purchase experience according to this article (well worth looking at what is enterprise VR) as soon you’ll be able to view a product in a catalogue from all three sides, flip it over and measure it to see if it will fit etc. to answer all your questions on whether you need it. It is coming!
Enterprise VR empowers customers to interact with products and content in virtual reality and preview in 3D, touch, flip, and customize the products they are interested in. byUnlock the Key to Customer Engagement with Virtual Reality
As well, how a business will communicate with a customer may change as text messaging becomes more acceptable as communication link to get questions answered or specials broadcast for the business.
