Positive customer relationships, not surprisingly, can make or break the success of your business. Just think about it: how likely are customers to become returning customers if they don’t have a positive relationship with your business and your brand? The problem is, many businesses aren’t sure where to start with building these relationships. Instead, they leave it to chance.
During a recent customer service training and development workshop, the X5 team facilitated a roundtable discussion on customer communication processes and receiving customer feedback.
It’s concerning how many sales reps disappear after an initial sale is made and the product or service has been delivered. They mistakenly think that their work is done. But their job of servicing the customer and building the relationship should have only just begun!
Successful sales and service reps will effectively handle complaints, continually provide customer satisfaction, plan for follow-up, and consistently communicate expectations and deliverables with their customers.
(Part of building positive customer relationships involves handling sales objections like a pro. Here’s how)
Ask Yourself These Questions to Start
Sales reps should make a point to stay in contact with their customers as well as receive feedback regarding the sales process. Furthermore, communication between the sales team and the internal team that handles implementation is imperative.
To start, ask yourself these questions:
- Does your business have a feedback mechanism in place to facilitate this process?
- How does your sales and service team communicate?
- Do they communicate enough?
- Have you asked your customers for feedback regarding what went well? Additionally, what could have gone better in the delivery of your product or service?
If your answer is no to some of these questions, you are not alone. However, given the current conditions of our marketplace, providing a high level of service to our existing customers needs to take top priority for any organization. Successful individuals involved in the sales process will create a personalized execution plan and share it with the customer prior to the implementation of the product or service.
A lot of this comes down to customer engagement and how you achieve it. Click to read this article next, all about the four rules of successful customer engagement.
Tips for Building Positive Customer Relationships
Here are a few key tips for building positive customer relationships that last:
- Keep customers informed throughout the project. (New products, competitive issues, account information, orders, key milestones reached etc).
- Discover what key concerns are important to your customers at different times.
- Continually check-in and don’t assume you know what your customers want.
- Communicate consistently, add value, and provide ideas, and resources to help your customers.
- If you make a mistake, be honest and admit it. Then, brainstorm creative ways to overcome the mistake.
- Reliability wins the day. So, follow up and do what you say you are going to do.
Some of these things sound like “little things.” But here’s the thing, those things matter! They add up. Yes, little things matter in customer service and we explain why in this post.
Did you learn a lot about positive customer relationships in this post?
Here are three more to read next:
- 4 Ways Difficult Customers Are an Asset to Your Business
- 5 Steps to Resolving Customer Conflict & Managing Upset Customers
- How to Identify Communication Styles in Sales and Service
This post about positive customer relationships was first published in 2019 but it was updated in 2021 just for you!
