A significant number of businesses is suffocating because the market is highly saturated. Coming up with an original business idea is practically impossible - the truth is that whichever vision you have, chances are that someone else has already built a company around it. However, this shouldn't demotivate you - you just need to find an approach that works.
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For that reason, you need to invest in your relationship with customers. The fact is that your competitors and you offer a list of product or services which are in the same quality range. So, the only determining factor for customers who are trying to decide between you and another company is the quality of your treatment.
Build Capable and Skillful Agents
To begin with, you need to have a capable team. If you constantly put serious pressure on your agents without having them properly trained, then your expectations are unreasonable. It's quite important for business leaders to set realistic goals, not just with this point, but generally. That way, your work history will be filled with accomplishments and your employees will be able to meet your expectations.
So - each plan you make needs to be based on solid facts. Therefore, if you want your employees to satisfy the high criteria, it is a necessity that they are properly educated. The fact is that short training won't do much for them - if you want your agents to make continuous progress, they will need to be trained in regular time intervals.
Kill Your Customers with Kindness
So, if your business is actually noticed in the today's market, then you will have to go further than "the customer is always right" principle. Not all customers will be pleasant - especially not the agitated ones - but all customers need to get out from your store with a smile on their face.
So other than having a capable team which is properly educated, your agents also need to be people persons with developed social skills. Someone who suffers from social anxiety and who doesn't really have thick skin can't be in your first line of defence when dealing with customers in need.
Provide Multiple Communication Channels
Furthermore, it's necessary to reach out to your customers by providing them with different communication mediums. Although your target audience does have similar characteristics, chances are that they are all scattered on different social platforms and that they have a preference when it comes to getting in touch with you, so it will either be:
- chatting,
- making a call,
- or making a video call.
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Which brings me to my next point - you have probably noticed how your "response rate" is a regular part of social network pages dedicated to business. Well, one of your priorities should definitely be to go "high" on that scale - something like this is reassuring for your customers and they will hesitate less before getting in touch with you.
Attend to Each Individual Separately
In the past decades, online stores (and physical ones, as a matter of fact) strived to develop a more personalized approach in sales. Nowadays, when technology is simple to manipulate, and when customers worldwide are absolutely bored and irritated when reading dry, faceless online content, it is mandatory that you make every aspect of your business warmer, friendly and welcoming.
So that you're perceived as a quality business, you will have to go a mile further when it comes to archiving information about your customer. By doing so and by building individual customer profiles, you'll be able to:
- Predict the needs of your customers.
- Have a clear overview of their purchase history.
- Congratulate birthdays, anniversaries, etc.
Equip Your Team with Powerful Tools
Another precondition to having a team that makes nothing but highly satisfactory results is providing them with appropriate tools. The contemporary way of doing business is based on using clever software; you can't expect from your team to beat your competition if they don't have the right instruments.
For this, you will need a proper piece of Customer Relationship Management Software. If you're not really sure where to begin and why should a business use a CRM, then you should get properly informed about their purpose and general features first.
If you take your time to collect information, you'll be able to learn which characteristics of CRM software are suitable to your business. Get prepared to encounter an extensive list of similar tools in this niche - but you won't get overwhelmed by it if you know exactly what you're looking for.
Like it usually happens, fixing a relationship is a matter of changing your mindset. In order to understand which aspects of your relations could be better, you need to get out of your own head and think about what your customers really want. If you manage to make the changes listed above, you'll be able to see the first results in no time.
