Every business revolves around its customers. The customers are the ones who keep you in business and who patronize you. Every now and then, it becomes necessary for you to appreciate your customers (you know, just to make them feel loved and valued). Customer appreciation is something that’s so simple to perform. You don’t necessarily have to break the bank to have a successful customer appreciation effort. In case you’re lost as t how you can show love to your clientele, here are a few ideas that could prove helpful.
Help Expand Your Customers’ Knowledge
There’s actually nothing wrong in helping your customers learn a thing or two from time to time. It becomes especially easy if that ‘something’ is in a way related to your field of expertise or the service or product you’re offering. For instance, say you own a shop where you sell wine. You could periodically organize a wine tasting event where your customers can come and taste wine and you’ll educate them on some flavor notes to look out for and how to easily identify different types wine when they taste them in the future. The more your customers know about wine, the more they’ll cometo an appreciation of what you’re actually doing and the more they’ll patronize you. So basically, it’s a win-win situation. Everyone goes home happy. Running a business online? You could easily host a webinar or a blog session where your customers can easily gain knowledge about a thing or two.
Spend Time with a Customer
Sometimes, the best way to show appreciation isn’t even in buying lavish gifts of any of that. All they could really need is your time. Organize a lunch meeting with a client, order some take out for any of your customers who is (or are) willing to join you and just listen to him or her (or them). Do the most to meet people and listen to how they navigate their everyday lives. This could also prove advantageous for your business due to the fact that if you know some of the areas where your customers aren’t doing so good, it could actually help you in offering organizing and delivering the services which you offer to them normally.
Offer Freebies
The human nature is one which always craves free stuff. You could use this nature to your advantage. If you own a store or a building establishment, you could provide some free stuff for customers who visit that day. Some stores always have complementary coffee in front of their buildings. This will prove to be useful in that it will refresh your customers while browsing your shop for items. However, great care should be takes as to what you distribute. It should be something generally accepted, harmless and which showcases your company or brand in a god light. Apart from being a way of appreciating your existing customers, it’s also a nice avenue through which you can attract new ones. Freebies could also come in the form of free units of whatever you usually sell to your customers. However, the gifts you give to them should be useful to their everyday lives. If you’re a dealer in electronics, you shouldn’t give out an electronic dog fence to your customers who don’t have pets.
Take Your Reward System Online Too
This step actually helps, especially for companies with customers overseas. Definitely, there are some of your customers who interact with you through online platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You could note some of them and just reward some of them with special announcements and special promos where they could be eligible for discounts or freebies. For instance, take the recent trend of mobile phone retailers rewarding people in Twitter with free phones if they can get specific numbers of retweets. You could also try something in that manner. You can also implement a means through which customers earn and use social media loyalty reward points. Basically, customers will develop loyalty points for providing feedback via active social media channels that make the most sense for your business.
Make a Donation in Their Name
You could make a donation to a local charity organization in the name of some of your most loyal customer. When you’re done, give them a call to let them know the good news. This would show them that as they’re doing business with you, they’re indirectly making the community a better place. Not to mention the good public ratings that could generate for you.
Throw a Party in Their Honor
You could also throw a shindig for your customers. You could g as far as adding a photobooth where guests can have their pictures taken and before the night is over, they’ll get the hard copies f their pictures with your company logo branded on them. Basically, the idea is to sponsor events and activities that encourage customer interaction, cohesion and which is also enjoyable
