Tips for Building a Strong Relationship with Your Online Customers
Strong and lasting customer relationships are a key differentiator for the success of any business. Dealing with customers online and earning their trust may turn out to be a tricky task but once you build a trustworthy relationship with these customers, they will spread positive word about your business on all online media portals. Therefore, your online customers can play a significant role in enhancing your brand’s image and getting you more customers. However, you need to make sure that there are no communication barriers between you and your online consumers, since a basic reason for businesses to lose their online customers is inefficient communication. Here are some tips for strengthening relationships with your customers.
Get Customer Feedback to Offer More Personalized Services
You can make your online customers really happy with your brand by offering them personalized services. You need to make your customers feel that you know them well and care for their needs, expectations and preferences. Take every customer’s feedback and design a small survey to know what your customers actually like or prefer. You can then modify your products/ service according to your customers’ requirements to make the experience memorable for them. For instance, if you are an online bedding and bath brand you can have a small comments section through which customers can give you suggestions. You can take your customers’ feedback and make sure that the colors and fabric are exactly what your customers want.
Communicate with Your Customers Instantly and Proactively
Most online customers complain that they find it hard to access a customer service rep in case of an order delay or query. Active and instant communication is likely to make your customers feel heard and being taken care of. Therefore, utilize an instant and effective tool for communicating and connecting with your online customers. Having live chat on website enables you to connect with your online customers in real time. Also, if there is some impending service issue, informing your customers beforehand by reaching out to them proactively would strengthen your relationship with them. You can use social media for online communication as well. Making yourself easily available and accessible to your online customers round the clock would build trust and earn you customer loyalty.
Use Smart E-Mail Marketing to Nurture Your Customer Relationships
Emails can help you in building lasting relationships with online customers, however, you need to use the right strategy for email marketing. Sending typical business and marketing emails to your customers’ inbox is not going to impact them. You need to pay attention to the content of your email and psychographics of your target audience to make it work for customer relationship building. Share content with your customers that is likely to interest them and keep the tone of your conversation friendly but professional. An important factor to consider is to not use canned messages, as it will make the recipient feel that you have sent a forwarded email to him/her. Give every email a personal touch to show your online customers that every one of them is really valuable to your business. Never send a bunch of emails to your customers on a weekly basis, instead send one after two weeks but compose it in such a way that your customers actually wait for the next one.
Appreciate and Reward Your Customers
In every relationship you need to show your appreciation. In order to build a lifelong relationship with your customers, appreciate and reward them more often. Show your appreciation by sending them season greeting cards. Collect the data of your repeat customers and send them thoughtful gifts on their birthdays as a way to show that you care. A customer would definitely value a brand that gives him/her special treatment. Keep your loyalty programs simple and flexible, give repeat customers regular discounts and rewards to make them stick with your brand for life. Send away signature gift baskets to your customers on Christmas, New Year’s Eve and other festivals to show that you value them. You can also feature “Customer of the Month” on your social media pages to bring your loyal customers into the limelight in order to show that you appreciate them.
Use Events to Build Relationships with Online Customers
A product launch show or a promotional event can be used to your advantage for socializing and building relationships with customers. Inviting your online customers to events would enlighten them more about your brand, it would provide you an opportunity to meet with your customers in person, develop trust and make a memorable impact on them. If for instance, you are an online clothing and accessories brand, inviting your online customers to your new product launch, would give you an insight about your target audience, you can take their suggestions and offer them small gifts as a token of gratitude that they actually took time out for your event.