Are you looking for ways to minimise churn rates and win more loyal customers? Or perhaps, you want to boost the return on investment (ROI) of your marketing and sales efforts?

In either case, overly pushy sales tactics won’t get you too far in a competitive market where your potential customers have a sea of options in front of them. In a consumer-driven market, it’s only natural that customers don’t have the patience to deal with negative purchase experiences or service limitations during the purchasing process. Did you know? 76 percent of consumers will stop doing business with a company after one negative customer experience. 

In today’s competitive climate, how do you differentiate your business and attract and retain customers? The key is to embrace a customer-centric attitude and impress customers at every stage of the buyer’s journey. It’s easier than it sounds!

Let’s take a closer look at what customer-centricity is and how you can develop a customer-centric business strategy.

What does a customer-centric company look like?

Customer-centric organizations put customers at the heart of everything they do. It’s in sharp contrast to the traditional approach of prioritizing revenue and profits and treating customers as numbers in sales reports.

This type of approach involves outlining and implementing a positive customer experience from the first interaction with your brand to post-purchase. The idea is to build long-lasting relationships by supporting customers at every stage of the sales funnel.

The best customer-centric companies use tools like customer relationship management (CRM) platforms to make customer data accessible throughout the organization and eliminate departmental silos. Additionally, they use cutting-edge tech innovations like artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, and virtual or augmented reality to improve customer experience.

From Amazon and Apple to IKEA, some of the world’s leading brands are built on customer-centricity. For instance, Apple strives to anticipate customer needs and builds products that address those needs.

Why does customer-centricity matter in 2024?

Did you know that improving the customer experience boosts sales revenue by 2 to 7 percent and profitability by 1 to 2 percent? Still, high revenue and profits shouldn’t be the only reason to prioritise customer-centricity.

Instead, keep in mind that 63 percent of consumers are willing to pay more for better customer service. A customer-centric business strategy helps you impress potential and existing customers and win their trust. Also, when you value your customer base and address their pain points, you foster customer loyalty by building trust and this becomes a key differentiator for your business.

The core of customer-centricity is long-term relationships, which, in turn, help you turn loyal customers into brand advocates. It provides a cost-effective way to drive brand awareness and sales through word-of-mouth recommendations. Additionally, it can help improve your product/service offerings and harness new business opportunities.

With 80 percent of business leaders planning to prioritise customer experience, it’s high time to define and implement a customer-centric business strategy.

How do you develop a customer-centric strategy?

A customer-centric approach involves more than building excellent products or providing prompt customer support. Instead, you must focus on delivering an exceptional experience across each touchpoint before and after a purchase.

Here are a few effective tips to build a customer-centric marketing strategy:

Make it a part of company culture

First things first—customer centricity isn’t the responsibility of a single department. Instead, you must treat it as an organization-wide initiative and make every department accountable.

The best way to do that is to build it into the company culture. Define customer-centricity as a core value of your organization and communicate the same to employees to help them align their goals and processes with your company’s overall vision.

Focus on future customer needs

Understanding customer needs and pain points is the foundation of delivering a frictionless purchase experience. However, when it comes to customer-centricity, you must take things up a notch by anticipating what your customers might want or need even before they know it. 

Start by mapping the customer journey to understand how they move across the sales funnel. Collect customer behavior data and purchase history to identify seasonal patterns. Additionally, monitor and analyze market trends to understand how customer preferences and needs might evolve in the future.

Ensure easy access to customer data

Did you know that 86% of B2B and 71% B2C customers expect businesses to be familiar with their personal details during a service interaction? They don’t want to spend time repeating basic information about their purchase, service request, or complaint every time.

It’s up to you to ensure seamless transfer of customer data among various departments and eliminate friction from the purchase experience. And that’s precisely where a solution like Act! CRM steps into the picture.

With Act!, you can create a centralised dashboard of customer data to serve as a single source of truth and provide marketing, sales, and support teams with a unified view of every customer. That, in turn, ensures seamless interactions, regardless of whether a customer is talking to a sales rep or chatting with a customer service executive.

Be there after the first purchase

How do you treat new customers after they purchase from you? Customer-focused companies strive to deliver a personalised onboarding experience and prompt after-sales support. The idea is to make every customer feel valued, not like just another item you ticked off a to-do list.

You can even use a digital adoption platform that integrates with your CRM system to trigger hyper-personalised onboarding flows. This is a great way to make a stellar first impression on new customers and win their loyalty.

Rewarding customers for purchasing from you is yet another way to win them over. Send free products, offer a service upgrade, or set up a loyalty program — any of these approaches can drive retention rates and repeat sales.

Collect customer feedback

What’s the best way to improve customer experience? While there’s no one-size-fits-all winner, feedback collection is a strong contender. It helps you identify gaps in your existing sales processes and onboarding flows and improve your customer-centric strategy.

From live Q&A sessions and polls on social media platforms to email surveys, there are various ways to ask customers for feedback. You can even conduct in-person interviews or host community events for deeper insight into customer expectations.

Make customer support accessible

If you’re trying to build a customer-focused company, you’ve likely already built a top-notch customer support team. But do customers have to jump through hoops before they can reach out to support reps? If that’s the case, you must look for ways to make support more accessible.

Start by implementing a multi-channel customer support strategy that includes chatbots, social messaging apps, live chat, email, and phone calls. Next, outline the details in a “Contact Us” page that customers can easily access from anywhere on your website. 

It’s also a good idea to add your contact details to social media profiles. Lastly, consider using a ticketing system to organise customer requests and provide timely resolution.

Monitor the right metrics

Implementing a customer-centric business strategy isn’t a set-and-forget process. You have to keep an eye on the customer experience and determine whether things are headed in the right direction. The metrics that come in handy here include:

• Churn rate
• NPS (Net Promoter Score)
• CLV (Customer Lifetime Value)
• CSAT (Customer Satisfaction)

Make customer-centricity a reality with Act!

The business benefits of customer-centricity make a compelling case for implementing a company-wide rollout. A system like Act! CRM can help you understand customer needs and purchase patterns to create personalised experiences for your customers. 

You can even use Act! to eliminate departmental silos and ensure seamless customer interactions that help build long-term relationships. It also comes in handy for personalizing the purchase experience and monitoring customer-focused metrics like NPS and CSAT.

Start your free trial to see Act! in action and understand how it can help you achieve customer-centricity. No download or credit card is required.

The post Fostering a Customer-Centric Strategy: Your Guide to Delighting Customers in 2024 appeared first on Act!.

What happens when businesses stop listening to their customers? Better competitors replace them.

Blackberry, Yahoo!, MySpace, and, more recently, Facebook are classic examples.

The data confirms it: 80 percent of customers prefer working with companies that offer a personalised user experience that aligns with their customer preferences. To create new products and services that solve real problems and optimise customer retention, you must listen to customer feedback and base your decision-making on what users want.

Truly innovative companies use customer feedback loops to inform their critical product decisions and create a roadmap for business growth. In this article, we’ll describe the different stages of these customer feedback loops and show you how to create one for your business.

What is a customer feedback loop and why is it important?

A customer feedback loop is the process of improving your products and services based on continuous feedback from your customers in an effort to reduce churn and acquire new customers. It’s a cycle in which you gather user feedback, analyze it, make changes, and then follow up with your customers to see if those changes hit the mark. Ultimately, feedback loops represent ongoing dialogue with users, involving them in the product creation process to fine-tune your offerings and meet customer needs more precisely. 

Consider a customer feedback example: If a high percentage of an invoicing tool’s users never create invoices after signing up, the product team should seek customer feedback to understand why. Based on customer responses, they should change specific product features and follow up with the same users to see if they’re satisfied with the new version.

The primary goal of this exercise is to simplify product usage, ensure customer success, and create a product that provides actual value to the users. It also shows customers that you care about them and genuinely want to create something useful. This increases customer loyalty to your brand and gives users a sense of ownership of your product because they play a part in its development.

The stages of the customer feedback loop

You can divide the typical customer feedback loop into four broad stages. Each stage has distinct goals and should ideally involve the key stakeholders from your customer service, product development, data analysis, and marketing and sales teams.

Stage 1: Feedback collection

The feedback loop begins with collecting customer feedback about specific aspects of your product and user experience. You can use various tools like feedback surveys, interviews, focus groups, live chat, and support tickets to collect customer data.

If you need more actionable insights, you can use secondary feedback sources like forum discussions, online reviews, social media posts, website analytics, and user behaviour tracking tools like heat maps and screen recordings.

Stage 2: Data analysis and interpretation 

Once you have the required feedback data, it’s time to organise it to find trends and valuable insights. Since customer feedback loops focus on specific product aspects, most positive and negative responses will have common themes and a few outliers.

You must carefully review all the responses and prioritise the issues most impacting customer satisfaction and product usage.

Stage 3: Implementation and testing

Once you’ve identified what’s hurting customer experience, it’s time to make changes to your product.

Since the customer feedback loop is a collaborative process, you can contact users for more detailed feedback if you aren’t sure about their pain points or how they want to see your product. Based on their feedback, create multiple product versions and use A/B testing to find the winner.

Stage 4: Customer follow-up

To close the feedback loop, brief your customers about your changes and seek fresh feedback. 

If they’re happy with the results, request a positive review. However, if they think it still needs work (and you agree), keep improving the product until you resolve the problem.

How to build a strong feedback loop for your business

The effectiveness of your feedback loops depends on the details of your process. Here’s what you need to ensure your feedback loop gathers valuable customer insights and helps you enhance user satisfaction.

1. Identify clear feedback goals

Every feedback loop must have a well-defined problem and cover a specific product feature or benefit that customers want. But your customers won’t always explicitly tell you what it is. It’s your job to understand their problem and identify the functionality that must be improved.

To achieve this, you need to ask the right questions in your surveys, questionnaires, interviews, calls, or any feedback collection method you use.

2. Use a CRM to track customer behaviour

One of the best ways to collect and interpret user feedback is to use an integrated customer relationship management (CRM) solution that provides a 360-degree view of customer interactions with your company and helps you make data-driven decisions.

Act! is a complete marketing automation, lead generation, and CRM system. You can use it to track pre- and post-sales conversations and user activity metrics to understand what your customers want from your product and where they believe it isn’t delivering.

Act! also simplifies data analysis by providing feedback from all stages of the customer journey in a centralised dashboard and highlighting trends, giving you a holistic view.

3. Track product usage to find problems

Improving your product based on customer survey responses, emails, or chat conversations is a reactive approach. You must complement this customer feedback strategy by proactively tracking real-time user behaviour and engagement with your product. 

Why? Because research shows only one in twenty-six customers share product feedback. Others simply switch to a competitor after just one bad experience without sharing negative feedback.

So, it is crucial to actively engage with users and continuously improve their product experience without waiting for customer complaints.

4. Encourage feedback through incentives

Since customers don’t always speak up, encourage them to share feedback by offering incentives. For example, a SaaS company can offer a free product upgrade or limited-time access to higher-tier features for feedback.

Similarly, companies can offer discounts, vouchers, or anything else to motivate users to share their thoughts.

5. Involve product teams in feedback analysis

It is crucial for your company’s key decision-makers, especially the product teams, to analyze and understand customer feedback. 

Startups with small and closely-knit teams may find this easier than large tech companies with distributed teams or multi-layered hierarchies. You can resolve this by creating cross-functional teams to handle customer issues with representation from all departments involved in delivering value to your customers.

Make customer feedback a core part of your business

Change is the only constant in business. To stay relevant and on top of the customer’s mind, organizations must continuously innovate and find ways to enhance their customer experience.

By using an integrated CRM and marketing automation system like Act! and making customer feedback a pivotal piece of your product and services development, you can easily build actionable feedback loops that help you gather timely information and stay ahead of your competitors.

Ready to see how Act! can help you build better customer feedback loops? Sign up for a free 14-day trial today. No credit card or download is required. 

The post Leveraging Customer Feedback Loops for Enhanced Understanding of Customer Needs appeared first on Act!.

The post 3 Ways Marketing Automation Improves Customer Experience appeared first on Act!.

Professional services span a vast range of businesses, from legal, financial, and business consulting to creative designers and architects. Although all of these business models are completely different, they have one thing in common: they primarily sell services instead of physical products, and their businesses are based on building loyal, long-term relationships, not impersonal transactions. 

Why are relationships so important?

Of course, every business must strive to earn a customer’s trust, but it’s even more important for professional services businesses, where customers place their confidence in something that is oftentimes intangible and future-focused. In addition, the services themselves can be complex, such as a long-term IT consulting project or investment planning with a financial services professional. As a result, building loyal, long-term customer relationships is increasingly important to gaining a competitive advantage and depends largely on your ability to establish trust and confidence over the entire course of your customer experience.

In the professional services industry, it can be extremely difficult to build customer relationships due to a number of factors. It all starts with how well you attract and nurture leads, convert them into customers, and meet (and hopefully exceed) their expectations. As a result, professional services companies are increasingly forced to find new ways to retain their customer base and attract new ones. 

For instance, according to Gartner, 89% of professional services businesses will compete on customer experience in the foreseeable future. Another study by SuperOffice found similar results: 9 out of 10 businesses that prioritise the customer experience will eventually beat the competition to win the largest share of loyal customers due to increased customer satisfaction. As a result, the customer experience is now a top priority. It’s now considered the main factor driving the growth of the professional services market.

Are resource limitations hurting your business?

So what’s holding professional services companies back from attracting new customers, building deep relationships and delivering an exceptional experience? Some of the most common challenges include:

Hiring and onboarding inefficiencies

For many companies, finding and keeping the right skill sets can be difficult in a tight market. Plus, getting those people up to speed quickly is key to ensuring they can provide a seamless customer service experience. How can new employees get what they need to start working without relying on other employees?

Lack of sales and marketing expertise

Not every small business can afford to hire full-time sales and marketing experts. And, since business owners already wear multiple hats, it can be difficult to find an adequate time to create and execute successful sales and marketing activities.

Too many time-consuming, repetitive tasks

Many companies still rely on manual data entry, such as customer contact updates and sales order entry. This can take valuable time away from focusing on customer needs.

Mismanaged customer data and insights

All too often, companies lack a centralised, integrated way to capture and manage customer data. This means that vital client information might reside in email and other apps, such as Outlook, Gmail, or spreadsheets. This lack of integration can make it impossible to track how well you’re meeting sales, marketing, and customer service targets.

Ongoing challenges with customer retention and upselling

Without the ability to manage all your data and metrics in one place, it can be hard to build upon existing customer relationships. To meet customers’ needs (and keep them happy and satisfied), it’s critical to know what they are asking for at any given moment so you can share the right services at the right time. If customer data resides in multiple, unintegrated platforms and apps, it can be almost impossible to anticipate future needs based on past purchases and interactions.

Overcome resource limitations and set your business apart 

Although every step of the customer journey involves multiple actions and touchpoints, the good news is that much of this can be automated with a customer relationship management (CRM) platform. And when you combine CRM with marketing automation, you have an integrated, robust and reliable tool that will save you time while providing a consistent and seamless customer experience. This can be a key differentiator for your professional services business as it leads to improved customer engagement, new business growth and the ongoing fostering of those much coveted, deep relationships.

What is CRM anyway?

Customer relationship management (CRM) software helps businesses manage all of their interactions with their existing and potential customers. With CRM, customer details and preferences are recorded and all customer activity and engagement are tracked. This enables you to provide a fully personalised and consistent experience to all of your clients, every time they engage with your business.

A CRM platform also helps businesses streamline their processes and workflows so that every part of the business is on the same page. Sales and marketing functions, especially, rely on CRM to create collaboration and improve their productivity.

The overall aim of a CRM platform is to provide more engaging customer experiences, increase customer loyalty and retention, and drive business growth and profitability.

Learn more about what a CRM is and how it can help your business.

What will marketing automation do for my business?

If you’re emailing newsletters, new product updates, announcements and reminders to your prospects and customers, you’re already using email marketing. Marketing automation simply lets you streamline these activities by automating all of the tedious and repetitive tasks. You set up your communication touchpoints once and then your marketing automation software ensures they take place as scheduled. This automation increases the generation of new leads and improves your sales and marketing ROI — all while freeing you up to focus on other, more important tasks.

How Act! will help you build client relationships

Act! provides an ideal platform for professional services companies of all types, such as financial advisors, brokers, consultants, lawyers, accountants, engineers, architects, creatives, and more. With Act! you can continuously build your pipeline of new leads, attract and convert prospects, and nurture existing customer relationships over the long term. As a result, you can achieve steady, predictable revenue through committed client relationships that also drive referral business and brand loyalty.

For example, consider a small financial services company whose clients have a broad range of investment needs. Some may be looking for aggressive growth portfolios, while others may want to buy a house or plan for a child’s education. The financial services business strategy includes offering a number of planning services at various price points, but needs an easy way of messaging these services to all of their leads, prospects, and current customers. Act! is an ideal solution to accomplish all of these tasks without taking valuable time away from serving your target customers.

This is because, with Act!, you can build a complete view of your clients and prospects through a customisable CRM experience that tracks their key information. Act! ensures your sales and marketing efforts are always unified, which makes it easier to stay organised, manage your customer relationships, expand your sales pipeline, and meet strategic business goals. 

And, because Act! is a full marketing and sales solution, it will help you easily take care of everything you need to manage your relationships and drive business by helping you to:

Stay on top of your data.

With Act!, all of your customer details are easy to access, whenever you need them. You can totally customise the dashboard to fit your workflow, and easily pull in customer contacts from integrated apps like Zoom and QuickBooks and email including Outlook and Gmail. This means your communications and calendar are always in sync without having to switch back and forth between apps and email. You can also use relationship and activity management features to automate communications and reminders so you never miss an opportunity to stay in touch with customers and prospects.

For instance, the small financial services company mentioned previously may have fewer than 10 people on the team, but they all need a way to access and update client information from a single source. Act! enables them to follow a consistent workflow to ensure that new client information is captured fully, accurately, and automatically thanks to integration with corporate email. Team members can also track every communication with clients and schedule calls or email follow-ups in a timely and consistent manner. Best of all, every associate can see these interactions and easily pick up where another team member left off before they went on holiday, for example. 

Market and sell like a pro.

With Act! you don’t have to be a seasoned marketing professional to achieve great results. Act! provides all the tools you need to capture prospects and usher them effortlessly through the sales and conversion process. Tools such as email marketing provide professional and customisable templates to help your email campaigns stand out in a crowd, improve open rates, and generate results. Act! marketing tools are designed to help you go beyond the initial sale to drive repeat business and upselling. Plus, the opportunity and pipeline management features help you stay on top of leads and other sales opportunities to ensure nothing falls through the cracks.

For example, a financial services company can use Act! to capture leads generated from a web form. Based on the target demographic and offer (such as a retirement planning guide), the company can then create an email campaign to nurture these leads to download additional content with the goal of eventually setting up an initial meeting with a financial planner. 

Work smarter, not harder.

Automation is the key to accomplishing more in less time. As your business grows, you need to shed time-consuming manual tasks so you can focus more on what really counts. Act! Marketing Automation (AMA) helps you eliminate tedious data entry and other management tasks that can consume valuable hours. Instead, AMA helps you create targeted marketing campaigns and other communications. Best of all, you can schedule emails in advance to ensure they go when and where they’ll make the most impact — whether it’s following up with prospects or offering relevant new services and promotions to existing customers. 

For the financial services company, the ability to schedule and automate timely communications is critical. Sudden changes in the housing market, interest rates, or other market changes could trigger a series of emails to a specific prospect or customer demographic. For instance, an email might link to a report or prompt the recipient to schedule a meeting to discuss their financial planning goals in light of new market developments.

The result?

You’ll be able to capture, track and respond to the key engagement information you need to build and maintain deeper customer relationships and gain the competitive advantage you’re looking for to grow your business.

The post How to build deeper customer relationships to outperform your competition appeared first on Act!.

What is customer loyalty and why is it important?

Building customer loyalty is one of the biggest challenges for every small business today. How do you get customers to buy from you on a regular basis? How do you get them to recommend your business to other customers? And why is it so important, anyway?

First, loyal customers can provide up to 80% of a company’s revenue and typically spend 67% more on products and services than new customers. Second, customer loyalty is also easier to achieve and is more profitable than customer acquisition. In fact, once a company has acquired a customer, the success rate of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%, as opposed to 5-20% for a prospect. It’s also about 5x more expensive to acquire a customer than to retain an existing one, so focusing on customer loyalty ultimately translates to the bottom line.

Happy customers are good for business

Keeping customers loyal means keeping them happy. When you see “churn” across your customer base, it can be a sign that somehow your company is failing to meet customer needs or expectations. Perhaps you need to be more competitive on price, offer new products, improve customer service, or communicate more regularly to stay engaged with customers. If you want a healthy business, you need happy customers, which is why a great customer experience is essential. To get started check out these 10 techniques to build customer loyalty.

Missed our webinar?

No problem! You can watch a recording of our webinar “How to Drive Customer Loyalty with Marketing Automation” here.

The webinar covers:

• How marketing automation can help your business deliver targeted and meaningful interactions
• How to improve your one-to-many communications and rebuild customer loyalty with targeted and personalised communications
• How to strengthen customer relationships

The post How to Build Customer Loyalty with Marketing Automation appeared first on Act!.

As you may know, the 15th of April is “Get to Know Your Customers Day,” and this national day is the perfect time for business owners to reconnect with their customer base after a particularly challenging year.

Get to Know Your Customers Day is celebrated on the third Thursday of each quarter. It’s a great reminder (and gentle nudge) to think of new ways to engage your loyal customers and learn more about them. Of course, improving customer relationships should be something small businesses strive for every day, but this event is a great way to really emphasise its importance.

For instance, what are some challenges your customers have faced over the past year? Is there something particular about your business that helped them solve those challenges, or at least made their struggles a bit easier? What do customers love most about your products and services, and what could you add or improve to make them even better?

Four ways to personalise customer connections

The past year ushered in a new era of faceless, contactless transactions. For that reason, it’s more important than ever to find ways to connect with customers on a personal level. While having the ability to slice and dice demographic data and manage your sales funnel is essential, it’s only one piece of the customer relationship puzzle. Here are four easy ways to learn more about your customers, and vice versa:

1. Ask them! Create an online survey

Surveys can be a great way to get more real-time information about your customers, including their problems, expectations, shopping habits, and even their complaints — whether it’s about you or your competitors. You can distribute your survey in many ways, such as sending an email, as a follow up after a sale, or through your social media pages. Remember to keep your survey brief and concise — perhaps no more than two or three multiple-choice questions — so customers will be more likely to answer it.

Need some help leveraging social media to engage with your customers? Click here to learn more?

Customers want to get to know the human side of your business as well. Telling your story through an email, direct mail, or social media post can help customers feel more connected to you on a personal level. This is especially true for small and family-owned businesses who have shared many of the same pandemic challenges as their customers over the past year. Sharing your story honestly — with both the ups and the downs — shows the real people behind the products and helps build more personal relationships with customers. And that, in turn, can help foster deeper customer engagement resulting in increased customer loyalty during this new year and over the long term.

2. Old-fashioned conversations (even if they have to be on social media)

The more you can engage with customers on a personal level, the better. Customers really do appreciate prompt and personal responses on social media platforms or through email. Of course, if the issue is about a specific order or a customer service issue, following up one-on-one is probably better. But when you respond personally, customers and prospects see that you care enough to take the time to engage with them.

3. Offer a customer appreciation event

Due to pandemic safety concerns, it may still be difficult to host in-person events, but there are plenty of socially distanced, online options available. For example, you could offer a gift card or raffle a giveaway or discount to the first 50 customers who share or respond to a social media post. You can also spotlight customers on social media (with their consent, of course) who have found uniquely creative or helpful ways to use your products or services.

4. Share updates about your business

Customers want to get to know the human side of your business as well. Telling your story through an email, direct mail, or social media post can help customers feel more connected to you on a personal level. This is especially true for small and family-owned businesses who have shared many of the same pandemic challenges as their customers over the past year. Sharing your story honestly — with both the ups and the downs — shows the real people behind the products and helps build more personal relationships with customers. And that, in turn, can help foster deeper customer engagement resulting in increased customer loyalty during this new year and over the long term.

Learn how to use email to tell your business’ story and keep your customers engaged

Fortunately, with the exception of a giveaway, all of these activities are free (minus the time spent creating and managing them). So even businesses that are still recovering from the pandemic can participate in Get to Know Your Customers Day without spending much money at all. And isn’t that something to celebrate?

Want to see how CRM and emarketing can boost your customer engagement? Try Act! for 14 days for free! 

After a challenging year, please let us know in this quick survey how you’re planning to reconnect with your customers to get to know them better.

The post Ready to celebrate Get to Know Your Customers Day? appeared first on Act!.

The 2020 pandemic affected everyone in some capacity, in every part of the world and now businesses are focusing on ways to reconnect with their customers. During 2020, businesses of all sizes struggled at least to some extent, but COVID-19 safety measures hit small businesses particularly hard. According to a survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 53% of small business owners don’t expect to return to pre-COVID-19 operations until the summer of 2021.

 In addition: 

• Only about 25% of small businesses in large metro areas have returned to normal operations (albeit with COVID-19 safety measures still largely in place).
• Barely one-quarter of small businesses have a minimum of three months of cash available (which is generally recommended as a buffer).
• Nearly 2% of small businesses closed their doors due to COVID-19-related profit losses. 

Of course, the pandemic has not affected all companies the same way. Restaurants, schools, arts venues, and travel and tourism companies are among the top industries that have been impacted significantly. While some businesses in these industries have managed to operate in survival mode, others have had to close their doors permanently.

Brighter days ahead: How many small businesses are rebounding 

Even within industries hit hardest by the pandemic, many small businesses and entrepreneurs are starting to rebound. According to a poll from MetLife and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the majority of small businesses (86%) have fully or partially reopened. While this is encouraging news, many SMBs are still figuring out how to safeguard their top asset — their loyal customer base and customer relationships. To get business back on track, SMBs must shift their focus from survival to meeting customer needs with personalised communication and follow-up. Even companies that maintained customer connections through social media and other online platforms should start thinking about how to re-engage with new offerings, loyalty programs, and other incentives.

In addition to renewed customer engagement, networking is another way SMBs can start to rebound. For instance, these Black-owned businesses in Atlanta created a collaborative network to help each other thrive and grow their companies despite ongoing economic challenges. By creatively sourcing funding, real estate, and other local resources, these entrepreneurs are finding whole new approaches to business that support the community as well. 

What’s more, other SMBs have either created or ramped up their eCommerce operations since many transactions can no longer occur face-to-face. eCommerce can support more than just online sales, it can enable training, onboarding, and other key business services. While it’s great to actively connect with customers through social media and messaging apps, enabling your market to conduct business with you in real time is essential. 

Meeting customer expectations in post-pandemic world

Higher customer expectations may be one of the biggest changes brought on by the pandemic. Forced into a socially distanced, contactless buying experience, consumers have come to expect that any experience will be frictionless, efficient, and connected. Meeting these high customer standards going forward will likely require at least some degree of automated business intelligence to drive greater personalisation, improve decision-making and customer service, and sharpen communication across the “four Cs”: 

• Content: Such as email marketing or social media posts
• Commerce: Including physical retail, eCommerce, or a mix
• Community: Such as informative how-to webinars 
• Convenience: Including customer coupons and benefits from loyalty programs

Of course, none of this is necessarily easy or fast, but building more flexibility and automation into your business operations will also help your company stay agile even after the coronavirus pandemic ends. Learn more about marketing automation and how it can help your business by clicking here. Plus, there are many innovative companies who are finding creative ways to overcome pandemic setbacks — many of which may help your business to thrive as well.

How has your business responded to the pandemic? Please share your experience in this quick survey. 

The post It’s 2021: How are you reconnecting with customers? appeared first on Act!.

No entrepreneur or small business owner starts a company with the intention of turning away customers. If anything, small businesses are more likely to take on any and all customers, even if they are difficult or simply not a good fit. No matter what type of industry you’re in — hospitality, real estate, retail, tech, or marketing — at some point you’ll likely have at least one customer who makes your life miserable. The good news is, it doesn’t have to be that way. Here are some ways to cut loose especially demanding customers without losing your sanity or your cool.

First: Determine if the customer relationship can be saved (or is worth saving)

Difficult customers are a fact of life in any business. It’s important to first identify why they are dissatisfied and what went wrong on your end that needs to be addressed. For example, is there a breakdown in customer service or did you fail to fully meet the terms of a contract? Is there something lacking in your product or service? (If you consistently hear negative feedback about some aspect of your business, it’s probably time to take an honest look at these complaints.) 

Also — and this may be the hardest for small business owners — can you clearly distinguish between customers who are merely annoying and those who are abusive or require more time and energy than they’re worth? 

Here are a few ways to objectively identify a toxic customer:

• They use abusive or aggressive language when communicating with you or your team.
• They disregard codes of conduct, such as refusing to wear a mask or leaving offensive comments on your social media pages.
• They constantly threaten to leave bad reviews unless you provide something extra for their “trouble,” such as free products or additional labor that wasn’t part of your original agreement. 
• They find nitpicky ways to criticise your product or service as a way to get you to lower the price (or to not pay at all).
• They constantly question the ability or expertise of you and your employees.

If a client exhibits any of this behavior, then it’s probably time to let that customer go. In this situation, even high-paying customers will cost your business more than they are worth in terms of lost energy, time, morale, and possibly good employees who don’t want to deal with terrible customers. 

Second: Make the decision to “fire” the customer and stick to it

Deciding to sever ties with a customer can be one of the hardest and most unpleasant business decisions you’ll ever make. It can be tempting to procrastinate or make excuses (e.g. “I’ll just finish this last project for them,” or “I know that person’s struggling financially so I’ll overlook that rude comment.”). Business owners may wait until they’re so angry that they inappropriately lash out at the customer — which can easily come back to haunt the company later in the form of retaliatory social media posts, bad reviews, and possibly even legal action.

Don’t let yourself get to that point. Take control, make the decision in a calm moment, and then move through the process in a professional manner.

Third: Decide the best way to proceed based on the nature of the relationship

First, understand the terms of your relationship with the customer. Do you have a legal contract that specifies which products or services you’ll provide, such as home remodeling or wedding planning? If so, you need to review the terms carefully to avoid legal consequences for breach of contract.

Next, what is the nature of your relationship? Have you maintained in-person communications for several months or years, or do you primarily run an eCommerce retail store where all of your transactions are online? 

In the case of personal client relationships, it may be best to break up in person. However, in the pandemic era you may be forgiven for handling it in a socially distanced way, such as over the phone. With more personal client relationships, it’s best to avoid breaking up over text or email, which can seem cowardly and unprofessional. However, in the case of online-only customers, email communication is acceptable.

Fourth: Write down what you want to say

Even if it’s better to have the initial “breakup” meeting in person, prepare your remarks ahead of time. You’ll likely be nervous, and the client may react angrily, so you want to have your talking points clearly laid out. Avoid long-winded explanations or statements that assign blame such as “you violated our agreement” or “you’re rude and my team hates working with you.” Instead, explain that the terms of your agreement were exceeded and include expectations not previously agreed to (or whatever the issue is). Then — and most importantly — explain what steps you will take to help the client smoothly transition to another business or service provider. Be sure to follow up immediately in writing with a recap of the meeting. This ensures you have a record of what was discussed while it’s still fresh in your mind.

For customers who are primarily online, it may make more sense to handle the breakup over email. For instance, if you have a customer who constantly complains about your product or service, or who consistently tries to low-ball your price with a competitor’s rates, it may actually be quite easy to call their bluff and invite them to move on to the other company. While you may lose a paying customer, you can now refocus your valuable energy (and that of your employees) to serve your other customers.

It’s also possible that the customer’s needs have simply outgrown your business, or perhaps the relationship was never a good fit in the first place. In this case, provide these customers with a list of legitimate companies who may be better equipped to serve them. This not only helps to end the relationship on a positive note, it also keeps the door open in case their needs change down the road. That customer may also remember you in a good way and refer other customers to you down the road. 

Fifth: Don’t think of the breakup as a loss, but as a reinvestment in your business

Many of us have experienced the messiness of a breakup and the benefits that eventually come from removing a toxic relationship from your life. No company wants to lose customers, but if you’ve been spending immense time, effort, and emotional energy to hold onto a customer, you might be surprised by how much you get back once that customer is gone. You and your employees will likely be happier and more productive — assets you can then reinvest into your company and other customer relationships.

By focusing on the customer journey you will be able to quickly identify and reward your most loyal customers while weeding out the toxic ones. Download our customer journey guide to learn how!

The post How to break up with bad customers: Saying “bye” without burning bridges appeared first on Act!.

So how do you build and nurture these high-value customer relationships? Here are three major ways:

Great feedback from another happy customer!#customer #greatfeedback pic.twitter.com/SmmXpfDcXW— Dalton Flooring (@Dalton_Flooring) February 22, 2021

1. Identify your most valuable customers

Keep in mind, this is likely more nuanced than identifying which customers spend the most money. For instance, let’s say a small bakery sells a variety of goods — from muffins and pastries to high-end wedding cakes. A loyal customer, who happens to be an event planner, routinely recommends the bakery to all of her clients. She also actively features their baked goods on her social media pages where she posts photos and videos of her catered events.

So what could this bakery do to keep this outstanding customer? An obvious answer is to offer referral discounts. In the case of the event planner, the bakery could offer a frequent-buyer discount or a corporate account that would allow her to pass savings onto her customers (which in turn helps the event planner offer more competitive prices to her market). The bakery also wins because the event planner gets their products in front of a wider audience who may have never heard about them otherwise.

Great service @bandq_help and from the manager at your Burgess Hill store #CustomerService— Graham Hollebon (@grahamhollebon) February 22, 2021

2. Humanise the customer experience

There’s a very good chance that your best customers will say that they love the experience with your company as much or more than your actual product or service. Consider that nearly 80% of American consumers say that speed, convenience, and friendly and knowledgeable customer service are the most important factors in their experience with a company.  

Humanising the customer experience is more important than ever in the era of contactless transactions. But how do you do that when so much of the buying experience is impersonal, and even in-person interactions require masks and distancing?

In the era of COVID, technology has helped us to personalise the customer experience in innovative (and crucial) ways. Companies of all sizes can use automated customer relationship management (CRM) solutions that generate insights across the entire customer journey. This can help business owners anticipate when to follow up after a purchase, re-establish contact with old customers, and empower employees to provide better customer service.

However, it’s important to note that even the best-run and most efficient companies can sometimes disappoint customers. But after making a mistake, you need to make it right — and quickly. Business owners should give employees leeway to make adjustments, such as instantly replacing or refunding damaged items on the spot without needing a manager’s approval. Or, if an online order contains the wrong items, an employee can not only ship the correct order for free, but also offer free shipping on a future order to maintain that customer’s goodwill. When things go wrong, as they will, this is how companies can earn a customer’s forgiveness and trust, which can actually build an even stronger relationship.

The KFM Service Desk team have played a key role in supporting King’s College NHS Foundation Trust during the #Covid-19 pandemic, here are some of the ways the team delivered a high-quality service… #CustomerService #NHS pic.twitter.com/ZfcVKsFsVL— KFM (@kfm_uk) February 16, 2021

3. Establish trust as the basis of long-term customer relationships

The COVID-19 pandemic has forever changed the way most people live, as well as their priorities. Customers are facing unprecedented challenges, some of which haven’t changed since the onset of the pandemic a year ago. Companies that can respond and adapt to the changing needs of their customers don’t just benefit from increased sales and exposure, they also gain the trust of their customers.

For example, when hand sanitiser shortages became critical in the early stages of the pandemic, many alcohol distilleries in Austin, Texas rapidly shifted from producing spirits to hand sanitiser. Not only did they start producing mass quantities within days, but they also sold them at fair prices, delivered them for free, and prioritised distribution to healthcare facilities and other critical providers. With this small change, these companies not only provided an essential product and service, they brought hope and good news to customers during an extremely challenging time.

Key takeaway: The experience is everything

via GIPHY

Perhaps now more than at any time in recent history, customers want to build relationships with companies they trust. They want more than just reliable products and services that deliver on their promises — they want to source them from companies whose values align with their own. So whether you’re a mattress company that provides shelter after devastating storms or a local coffee roaster that sources fair-trade beans, it’s important to remember that the customer experience with your brand involves far more than just the sale. It’s embedded in everything you say and do.

Want to take your customer relationships to the next level? Check out our latest posts about building great customer experiences.

The post How to identify (and keep!) your most valuable customers appeared first on Act!.

Technique #1: Deliver an excellent experience from the get-go. Like a first date, your business gets only one chance to make a first impression. In the digital world, those impressions are created online, whether through your company website, social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, or ratings on hubs such as Google and Amazon. Ensuring prospects come away with a favorable impression is critical to building brand loyalty, even if they don’t make a purchase the first time (or even the first few times).

Technique #2: Craft the post-purchase experience. A single purchase is never “one and done.” To drive repeat business from current customers, it’s important to understand as much as you can about them so you can craft effective follow-up communications. You can send a survey to gain customer feedback, suggest a product or service related to the one they purchased, or perhaps offer free shipping or a discount on the next order. Determine follow-up touch points and when and how to engage.

Technique #3: Deliver what you promise. Customer satisfaction is about much more than the sale. When you go above and beyond, even in a small way, new buyers often turn into repeat customers. For instance, adding a small product sample to an existing order not only makes the customer feel like they received more than they paid for, it may also entice them to try a new product next time. Of course, it’s more important to ensure customers receive the actual product or service they were promised. If things fall short, make it right by delivering great customer service experience quickly and without a hassle.

Technique #4: Personalise communication. This typically requires you to segment your marketing lists to avoid sending generic spam-like messages or worse, advertising a product or service a customer already purchased. A marketing automation platform can help you easily segment your customers into relevant categories based on demographics, purchase history, and other factors. Then you can follow up with communication and offers that are more compelling and relevant. You also need to determine a follow-up schedule of offers, emails, and phone calls to ensure you stay engaged.

Technique #5: Encourage happy customers to talk about you. In the digital marketplace, testimonials and word-of-mouth are everything. This is why a well-crafted voice of the customer (VOC) strategy is essential. Not only does a VOC strategy provide a way for customers and prospects to post questions and answers, they can also access ratings and reviews about your company. It’s especially important to give happy customers a place to talk about your company with other customers and prospects in your community. Online reviews and customer referrals are no longer optional — they are critical in today’s all-digital sales environment.

Technique #6: Continually refine customer communications based on feedback. It’s not enough to just enable online reviews. You need a way to effectively respond to valid feedback — good or bad. Is a reviewer complaining about poor customer support, a rude associate, or a product defect? Or has someone offered a glowing, detailed review about a recent purchase? Be sure to track responses to determine what’s working and how to improve the customer experience. Sending verified customers a personal note can also be an effective way to improve customer retention.

Technique #7: Enhance the customer experience with different types of touchpoints. If you primarily rely on email to communicate with customers, have you considered a different way of reaching out? For instance, you can enhance the in-store experience with product demos, free samples, or mobile checkout to expedite the purchase process. For eCommerce customers, you could send a post-purchase thank-you card with a discount code for future purchases, which also helps to personalise the experience. The overall goal is not just to drive awareness and sales, but to create an engaging customer relationship that makes them want to come back.

Technique #8: Customise the journey. A customer journey includes all of the experiences customers have as they go through each interaction with your brand, products, and services. As you know, not all customers are the same, and some are more valuable to your business than others. How can you identify and segment customers in a way that allows you to give them the most value from your brand, while also building their sense of loyalty? Marketing automation enables you to segment by criteria such as type of audience, where they are in their customer journey, which products or services they are most interested in, and their demographics such as geography, age, income level, and more. Using this explicit data, you can target content most likely to engage customers across every stage of their journey so they enjoy the most relevant and personalised experience.

Technique #9: Consider different payment plans and payment options. Depending on your business model, customised payment plans based on monthly or annual subscriptions may entice customers to stick with your company instead of switching to a competitor. For some businesses, allowing customers to pay in installments for a high-priced item or service, such as a summer wedding event, can also help retain customers. While some companies may not want to finance customer purchases, installment plans can help certain types of businesses stay afloat during slower times of the year. For instance, some local farms offer community supported agriculture (CSA) boxes, which are weekly offerings of local produce that customers pay for up front each season. By enticing customers to pay at the beginning of the season, farmers have a more reliable income stream during that period and customers know they will get first pick of the crop.

Technique #10: Reward customer loyalty. Of course, the most obvious way to retain customers is through customer loyalty programs. When customers have so many choices today, a rewards program with concrete perks not only shows your appreciation, it delivers benefits that give customers more incentive to stick around. To be successful, loyalty programs should be easy, cost-effective, and convenient to use. Don’t make customers jump through hoops to reap their rewards. For instance, if you offer a “buy 9, get the 10th free” offer on your website, automatically populate the cart with the discount (or at least make the discount code easy to find and use). There’s nothing more annoying for customers than to realise a simple glitch prevented them from redeeming their perk. In addition to convenience, make sure your loyalty program reflects their interests and purchase history. Don’t tease them with a “free” offer of something they’ve already purchased. Ultimately, if you show your customers how much you appreciate their patronage, they’re more likely to reward you with repeat business.

Ready to take the next step on your customer loyalty journey? Find out how Act! can help. Sign up for a free 14-day trial to see how our unified CRM and marketing automation platform can work for you.

The post 10 Techniques to Build Customer Loyalty appeared first on Act!.