Customers are kings. Forget the trash talks that glorify content.
Often, we fail to admit that the fulcrum of any business are its customers. It is their patronage generates income. Revenue is the lifeblood of all businesses, and its absence beckons on sudden catastrophe and demise.
You don’t need customers if you can fund your operations and still remain profitable. If that’s not possible, then you must focus on integrating your customers with your business. Customer delight ought to be your topmost priority.
Whether you are a freelancer or serial entrepreneur, these simple steps can help you 10X your customers’ satisfaction, recruit them as long life brand evangelists, and earn you recurring revenues and referrals.
#1. Personalise: Call Me by My Name.
Give a man a new pen, he writes his name first. He’s that predictable.
Indeed, marketing is everything. Your production, packaging and distribution must speak to your marketing strategy.
Today, marketing is no longer mass and the ingredient is incomplete without personalisation.
The success of the Coca-Cola “Share A Coke” campaign has been detailed in tons of articles and reports around the web. It was an effort to attract the teeming population of teens that considered the drink as their parents’ drink — “trusty but dusty”.
Coke needed to make a personal connection with teens. There is nothing more personal than your name. That is where the ‘Share a Coke’ concept was born: take the Coca-Cola brand name off 20-ounce bottles and replace it with 250 of the most common teen names, a simple, powerful idea that would connect teens to Coca-Cola.
After the global rollout began in 2012, over 1,000 names have been printed on cans and bottles and more than 150,000,000 personalized bottles have been sold. #ShareACoke even became the number one global trending topic. It resulted in over 1 billion impressions. The campaign won seven awards at the Cannes Lions festival, raised U.S. sales 2.5% after a decade of decline, and continues to be expanded in new and innovative ways that are still driving revenue now.
When your brand message represents your customers’ interest, you grow mind shares, market shares, and customers will hold a strong sense of belonging towards your brand.
Thrive to obtain valid information about your customer. Shun “Dear Customer” for “Hi John”, it resonates better and feels welcoming.
Be prepared to give out enough to obtain this personal information.
In online marketing, free eBooks, free webinars, email courses, cheat sheets, checklists, and coupons are common bait for prospect’s email address.
#2. Complement: Remember My Special Days.
I love brands that complement Birthdays, Wedding Anniversaries, and National Days, and of course, I am not alone I think we all do.
They are invariably maximizing our relationship. My bank has a way of showing they care in their yearly birthday wishes. It feels as if someone was thoughtful enough to type those words to me even when I know the same message goes out to thousands of other customers that I share birthday with. By and large, such “automated caring” has grown my fondness and advocacy for the bank.
Whatever the scale of your business, you can delight your customers with good compliments on events that mean something to them. A common place to start is definitely birthday wishes.
#3. Offers & Discount: 4 Candy, 1 free.
In my fourth book, Catalysts, I detailed the idea of a Godfather Strategy and dishing out irresistible offers to your customers.
Customers love brands that cut them great deals. Whether it is giveaway, splash sales, or discount sales. Giving your customers a reason to buy increases revenues, brand awareness, customer base and loyalty.
People share information that excites them. If your offers are jaw breaking and truly irresistible, they will not act as a magnetic force that attracts sales, it will also attract new and loyal customers.
For a detailed dive into the science and art of crafting irresistible offers, you can order for a copy of Catalysts. In it I explored seven different elements that greatly accelerate business success. Having an irresistible offer is one of them.
#4. Connect: Feel and Express My Pains.
Let your marketing reflect the customer’s story. When you express your customers’ fears, desires, and motivations, you create a memorable and unforgettable brand.
Oftentimes we find it hard to recognise that my success story is less important than our success story (that carries your customer as the hero). Customers are the bread and butter of business, they are both the pillars and the cornerstones.
Brands should therefore exist to supply their needs. We all want to meet people, places, and innovations that suit us perfectly and have something to do with our experiences and background.
We long to connect. That’s why brands with the most social engagement thrive on customers’ generated contents.
Sharing your customer’s reviews, progress, and feedbacks. A strong community of loyal customers are any business greatest asset, they keep the business afloat in times of turbulence.
#5. Celebrate: An Award of Consistency.
At Kitcart.net, our solution helps customer generate and automate online sales. We provide an e-commerce platform with payment solutions. Our software manage inventory, take orders, and simplify online shopping.
We know the market and understand it often get demanding, sales may stagnates for store owners. So customers don’t lose faith in their e-commerce business during these times, we help eliminate some of these struggles.We offer extra-services in strategy, marketing, sales, and branding.
We also reward high performing customers by highlighting them as best customers of the week, month or year.
Celebrate your customers, they will genuinely appreciate it. It gives life to the brand. As much as youtubers love the ad revenues, the silver, gold, and diamond awards part the motivation to keep creating contents.
#6. Acknowledge: We feed you and your Staff
There is nothing for a business without its customers. How quickly we forget this and treat customers like rags.
Acknowledge your customers as the bloodstream of your business. They pay for everything and hire everybody.
Knowing is not enough, let it be part of your core message. Be dutifully customer-centric. If a policy will harm the customer’s satisfaction, review it.
Fight for the customer more than you fight for profit. Let the tone of your brand messages echoes the supremacy of your clients.
#7. House: A Trip to Jamaica, All Expenses Paid.
Invite customers for seminars, lectures, anniversaries, parties and any event that will include housing and feeding them. Clothes them (consider branded vests).
While I was discussing this article idea with one of my staff, he enjoyed this tip so much he connected the dots to his high school’s practice.
He shared that the school doesn’t conduct PTA meetings like every other school. In her school, it is Lunch with Parents and within this togetherness meal “Matters Arising” comes up.
Indisputably, the focus of the whole gathering is on the “Matters Arising” but the school rebranded it as a lunch session to discard the reputation of a long-boring-talk of orthodox PTA Meeting.
Throwing out the offers to house your customers with the promise of full delight provides opportunities to attain massive brand engagement, interactions, and breed happy loyal customers.
#8. Listen: Your Pictures Don’t Have Round Edges.
Be a listening brand and win because many other brands don’t.
When you receive comments on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest page, critically assess your customer’s complaint. Don’t rush at deleting ‘haters’ comments, it contains valid insight from an aggrieved customer that despite your brand improving and handling it better.
Listen to their needs, points of corrections, and suggestions.
#9. Apologise: Admit You Are Wrong!
Many customer care representatives suck at delight. The worst part is: they are actually trained to sound that dumb.
Stop saying “Sorry for any inconvenience”, admit the fault and spell out your mistake. “We apologise for charging your card twice.” is direct and sounds truly apologetic.
Generic responses don’t express genuine interest in the customer’s concern. Ironically, we all have attested to the borderline dumbness of those lines when we approach other businesses’ customer care, yet we go on to adopt the same repertoire of trash for our support service.
We can do better and start changing the narrative of what constitutes good customer support service.
#10. Respond: Sorry Is Not Enough, Fire Someone.
Your first step is to listen, the second is to creatively respond.
If not every time, at least once in 5 years to satisfy a highly aggrieved customer, sack a lazy and obdurate staff.
If shoppers complained about late delivery or poor packaging or broken fragile products, do something about it.
Execution is the bedrock of success. Do something about your customers’ complaints to reinforces your promise that you prioritise them.
Final Thoughts
Winning big in business begins with the clear awareness that customer is everything. If the customers are with you, no force can go against your business.
Start out your e-commerce journey within minutes. Kitcart.net makes having a storefront, managing inventory, taking orders and receiving payments super easy and simple.
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