“Get To Know Your Customers” Day

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Most of us who are old enough to remem­ber would have fond mem­o­ries of the good old days when busi­nesses were ran by own­ers them­selves: cor­ner stores, book shops, cof­fee joints, where every­one knew every­body by their first names, and even hang out for meals on occa­sion. In the good old days, busi­nesses ran on relationships.

We may not always be able to get very per­sonal with the scale of our busi­ness oper­a­tions. Besides, there is the inter­net, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, and social media that has allowed us to be more effi­cient in reach­ing out to our customers.

But today is “Get to Know Your Cus­tomer Day.” This is a good oppor­tu­nity to reori­ent our mind­set back to build­ing rela­tion­ships with our cus­tomers, and believ­ing that cus­tomers will do busi­ness with peo­ple they know, and like.

TIPS:

  1. Make fol­low up calls on how they like the prod­uct or ser­vice so far and how the cus­tomer can be helped with any­thing.  We turn the tides today. We call to ask them some­thing, and not wait for them to do it.

Be care­ful not to make it sound like a sales call, though or we negate what­ever impact we’d like to achieve for today in the first place.

  1. Go on Face­book, or what­ever social media you can uti­lize to con­duct a sur­vey, and maybe mount an online promo, say, an instant gift for answer­ing a sur­vey. This gives the day a feel of being spe­cial, and sends the mes­sage that you are seri­ous in try­ing to get feed­back from them.
  2. Send out thank you notes, and if resources allow, attach a gift along with it.  Strive to have the note hand-written to make it per­sonal. This ges­ture will go a long way in estab­lish­ing your pres­ence and will make the cus­tomer feel like you remem­ber him/her, AFTER you got his/her busi­ness.
  3. Orga­nize a cock­tail reception/ inti­mate meet­ings with your cus­tomers. Man­age the num­ber of invi­ta­tions for these activ­i­ties, or you risk los­ing the per­sonal con­tact that you want to achieve. In choos­ing who to invite, run a list of those who are not yet your best cus­tomers, but want them to get to the next level. And don’t lose sight of what this activ­ity is for: to get to know them. Talk to them. Find out more about their per­sonal cir­cum­stances and pref­er­ences. This will pro­vide the all-important fresh per­spec­tive that may immensely help the way we look at our­selves and how our cus­tomers look at us.

In this highly com­pet­i­tive envi­ron­ment that we oper­ate in, cus­tomers are spoiled with choices. We need to help make it easy for them to choose to do busi­ness with us, not only because our prod­uct or ser­vice is supe­rior over oth­ers, but because we actu­ally care to know them and reach out to them.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Jodi Beuder
We help organizations create a positive connection between customers and brands. We promote synergy through integration as it builds on the decades of collective history of renowned expertise. MHI Global is your comprehensive source for customer-management excellence solutions to compete in today's ever-changing, customer-centric environment.

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