Suppose you are a local store or a small business owner. In that case, it might not be easy to get a dedicated customer support team available 24/7. However, this does not imply that you cannot offer the best customer service for your loyal customers.
Your store products might be of fantastic quality, and your business staff members might be extremely talented, but direct customer-company communication significantly impacts their behaviour. If you offer excellent service with the right attitude, it leaves a positive impression on the customer.
We all are well aware of the rapid pace at which competition in the business industry is growing. Thus, customers have countless options. If you fail to provide good customer service, they will not bat an eye before barging into your competitor's store.
Thus, you need to remember that securing clients is not your only criterion. You have to retain them and ensure that their trust and loyalty towards you remain firm.
If you think customer service is not a primary objective of a business, you are deliberately creating a huge gap between customer needs and your deliverance. Thus, in this article, we have developed six effective strategies to improve the customer-store relationship.
Tips to improve customer-store relationships:
1. A simple thank you goes a long way
Saying "thank you" is not just a courtesy remark. As a store owner, when you simply say thank you to your customers, it acknowledges the fact that your relationship with your customer is codependent. When you offer quality customer service, they make sure to help your business grow.
It is a form of expressing gratitude towards them. It is the first and primary step towards customer loyalty and building a long-lasting relationship with them. It also ends your conversation on a positive note. These personalized one on one communications are a big part of building customer relationships.
2. Addressing the customers by their name
It is important to use the customer's name while having a one-on-one interaction with them since it establishes a more personal relationship. It also makes them feel important and appreciated. Moreover, in today's world, where digital technology has taken over the Industry, people have increasingly become more professional and cold. If you do not feel the necessity of using customer names, your relationship with them is just based on goods and money exchange. This is purely materialistic and usually results in the short term and fragile relationships with customers.
This is also a positive approach and makes the customers feel their opinion matters. Thus, the relationship scales higher and faster on the scale of loyalty, trust and mutual respect. Therefore, just addressing them by their names give you so many added benefits.
3. Pay later for loyal customers
Regular or loyal customers need to be treated in an exclusive manner to make them feel special and retain their loyalty membership towards your store.
Allow these customers to pay later if they are unable to give you the entire money of their purchased goods during checkout. This shows that you have faith and trust in them, which in turn makes them feel the same towards you and your business. It also portrays that you put customer convenience before money.
4. Surprise discounts during in-store payments
Do you know what's even better than in-store discounts? It is a surprise in-store discount. Usually, when consumers know about discounts, they are already expecting it, and they get it. Hence it just exactly meets their bar of expectation. However, when you decide to give sudden discounts during their checkout, they do not have any prior expectations. Thus, their bar is extremely low. In this case, a sudden dip in price is bound to make them happy and opt for a second time purchase. This strategy has been proved effective to make customers satisfied and earn referrals.
5. Birthday and Anniversary wishes
Besides providing excellent customer service, you can further nurture your relationship with your customers by showing them that your care and service goes beyond just while purchasing products. You can achieve this by sending them personalized wishes for special occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries, etcetera.
However, sending wishes is not the only thing you could do to establish a solid connection with your customer. You could also send them special offers specially made for this occasion. Thus, not only does it strengthen your relationship with them and increase your loyalty points, but also you make some sales.
6. Soliciting and implementing feedback
One of the most effective ways to provide quality customer service is soliciting feedback once in a while. This is the best way to know about customer experience and how to make it even better for them in future. However, just taking their feedback is not enough to garner their support and approval. You have to act on them and devise solutions that benefit your store and the customers.
You have to understand your customer's pain points. After that, you have to do some research to come up with practical strategies. However, you have to realize that implementing these strategies might take sufficient time, so do not feel the need to rush with everything.
If you are a local business store owner and wish to gain more customers, it is best to go online and secure a bigger base of loyal customers. We here at Orderly will help you along every stage of your business sales process. It has extremely simplified tools, and thus the entire application process is a piece of cake. Here, at Orderly, you get to have a more personalized one-on-one conversation with your customers since our application helps you take orders in better ways connected with WhatsApp. Thus, you can provide the best customer service with our app.
