When you own a business, one of your primary duties as a business owner is to attract and retain customers. The only way to retain customers is to keep them happy. While you might think that your customers are only concerned with your prices, there are several other factors that your client base considers more important that pricing. While the highest quality products and services at the lowest price points are ideal, here are 5 other things that your customers want from you and your employees.
#5: Simplicity
The last thing that your customers want is a complex sales transaction. When they do business with you, they need to know that buying is simple and easy. By giving your customers access to everything they need in one, convenient place, you can ensure simplicity and improve customer ratings. Simplicity should be evident in you face-to-face sales along with your website user experience.
#4: Businesses to be Accountable
If you make a mistake, you need to be accountable for this mistake. Customers never want the businesses that they are loyal to to pass the buck onto others in the company or other contractors or vendors. Even when the issue can be resolved in another department, it is important for every associate to take responsibility and make it their job to solve the issue or connect the customer with the right party after explaining what has gone wrong.
If businesses want to be accountable, they should also listen to their customers and ensure that they are satisfied. A certified Enterprise Feedback Management vendor can make sure that your company is doing all that it can to understand and apply pertinent customer feedback. For example, the company Velveeta cheese used Facebook to gather information on what their customers thought the new packaging should look like. They put up two options on Facebook and asked users to choose their favorite. This small but significant process helped Velveeta choose it’s new packaging.
#3: Managers to be Accessible
Customers want you to answer when they need it. If you cannot answer the phone or your email immediately, you need to be able to get back to your client in a reasonable amount of time. If you are not accessible, your customers will feel like they are not important to you and they may take their business elsewhere. If you do not already have one, assign an employee to be a customer satisfaction rep. Have him or her constantly checking in on customer satisfaction analytics to verify you are meeting customer’s needs.
#2: Creative Solutions and Alternatives
Your customers look for the best solutions, and they turn to you to give them creative ideas that they may have never thought of. As a business owner, especially in the service and technology industry, you need to be open-minded and creative if you want to keep your client base and continue expanding.
Take Blockbuster for example. When Netflix and streaming movies came out, Blockbuster was dominant in the movie rental industry. Blockbuster didn’t think they need to change any of their processes or improve with advancing technology. It a matter of a few short years, Blockbuster went from being the movie rental giant to filing for bankruptcy because they failed to adapt to customer’s changing needs. Netflix took the spotlight because they came up with creative solutions to meet customer’s wants in the movie rental industry.
#1: Preparation
There is nothing worse in a customer’s mind than speaking with a business professional who has not done their homework. Before your speak with a client, you need to be sure that you have all of the right information and you know what sources to get the additional information from in a timely manner.
Following these five tips will help your company analyze if you’re on the right track to keeping your customers happy and exceeding their expectations.
This article was written by Dixie Somers. Dixie is a freelance writer and avid blogger who writes frequently for the business, family, and finance industries.
Image Credit: Shutterstock.com
