The relationship you have with your business customers has a huge impact on your own work.
Bad customers cause stress, anxiety, extra work, and they can cost you serious money. On the other hand, good customers are a joy to work for. Things are so easy, you may even ask yourself, “why isn’t everyone else like this?”
The thing is, it doesn’t have to be luck of the draw. You can identify key traits in advance and take action to nurture positive relationships, even when there’s a risk of things going downhill.
The trick is recognizing signs of bad customer service and taking action to improve them.
When we talk about customer relationships, we’re talking about a range of different people – current, future and previous customers. All of these customers offer value (and money) to your business in their own ways.
Having good relationships with customers at all stages increases both your customer conversion and retention rates. It’s important for business too – better customer relationships get invoices paid faster, help to attract more customers, make more money and be more successful.
In a time when more and more people are making lifestyle decisions about their work, it’s vital for you and your staff to have positive work relationships with your customers.
The significance of customer relationships in business is hard to understate. Not only does it impact the way you and your staff feel about your work, but it can be seen in specific business metrics too.
Benefits include:
Every interaction with your customer (or potential customer) is a make-or-break opportunity that can either leave them impressed or underwhelmed. A customer relationship in business is the totality of all of these interactions.
These are some of the common characteristics of a good client relationship that are often done poorly.
First impressions last. When a customer first interacts with your business, they want to feel welcome. Ensuring all aspects of this first engagement is critical – and it could be as simple as having a staff member personally greet them. This gets things off to a good start, and is a gateway to other customer service they may need.
First time customers are quick to judge, and if they see dirty coffee cups, stacks of untidy mess and general untidiness, then you can expect that judgement to be harsh.
This also applies to online businesses, but more so. A messy or cluttered website with a poor user experience will turn customers away, and give existing customers a reason to look elsewhere.
On the flip side, if things are laid out tidily and they can find what they need easily, that makes things much easier. Does having an untidy office or website mean you’re bad at your job? Of course not. But it will create an impression that things are cluttered, disorganised and messy.
If a customer wants service, they should get it quickly. People are time poor, and the longer they have to wait to get service, the more frustrated they’re likely to be.
Wait times may also be perceived as a bad sign – for example, if it takes longer to reply to a customer, they may start to think something has gone wrong.
Communication is like a universal key to solving a whole lot of other problems. By communicating well, you can set realistic expectations, understand customer needs, and keep them in the loop at all times.
However, if you don’t communicate well, customers are left to interpret silence themselves. This can lead to frustration, exaggeration and stress. It’s imperative that businesses communicate with customers so they feel valued and informed.
Customers don’t always understand their own issues. It takes initiative to identify other ways to help them beyond their specific instructions. At the same time, customers can be frustrated if you don’t take that initiative.
To use the mechanic example again, someone may bring their car in for an oil change. They may have another issue with their car that they don’t know about, and if that problem leads to them breaking down a week later, they may be frustrated that you didn’t identify it in advance.
Monitoring your conversion rate can provide valuable clues about your customer relationships. For example, if you’re getting in a lot of leads but only converting very few, it can be a sign of poor customer service.
It’s a good idea to look into why leads aren’t converting so you can take steps to improve it.
Shrinking profits can be the result of a large range of factors, including poor customer relationships. Of all the metrics you monitor in your business, profit is most significant. If you find profits dropping, one of the questions you should ask yourself is if your customer service is to blame.
Read more: See more signs of poor customer relationships.
As well as addressing the tell-tale signs of poor customer service, there are a few effective techniques you can use for building good relationships with your customers.
Customer relationships are hugely influential in business, with the ability to make or break your success.
It’s important to take the first step in fostering positive relationships with your customers. Businesses have the opportunity to set the tone from the outset. If you can do that right, you’ll find the vast majority of customers will respond in kind.
One of the best things you can do is to dedicate time to identifying opportunities through good b2b relationships. Analyze your systems and processes critically and see where you can make improvements. This type of foundational work will impress your customers, improve your bottom line and enable your business to grow.