Any business that wants long-term growth needs to treat its customers with the highest level of respect. This does not necessarily mean that the “customer is always right” mantra comes into play here. Instead, your customer base simply needs to feel that you care about their well being. The problem here is that many businesses today spend far too much of their existing budget on marketing to convey this message. After all, more customers mean more revenue, right? Not always!
Think for a second about how the most popular companies have grown, and why many remain so successful. Most have gotten to be where they are today because of a word of mouth. According to a study by the American Marketing Association, 70 percent of consumers choose to go with certain products and services because of online reviews. This number jumps up to a staggering 90 percent when factoring in reviews from friends.
A Zappos Case Study
How can your business continue to grow? Focus more on the customer service side of the equation! Take a company like online retailer Zappos for instance. CEO Tony Hsieh claims that allocating more money into customer service and away from your current marketing budget is the way to go. Doing business this way allowed Hsieh to grow his business to a valuation of over $1 billion.
The cool thing about Zappos is that they have done plenty of crazy things to make sure that customers remain happy. For instance, they decided to send flowers to a woman after she ordered many pairs of shoes because her feet were damaged from a medical procedure. In 2009, a woman living near the Zappos office wanted to order a pair of her favourite shoes. Sadly, they were out of stock. Instead of informing her to choose something else, an employee from Zappos went to a nearby competing store, bought the shoes, and hand-delivered them to her at no additional charge.
How to Focus on Customer Service Effectively
While you may not be in the business of selling shoes and delivering them for free to a customer’s doorstep, there are plenty of ways that you can improve your customer retention rate without spending additional marketing money.
- Improve Response Time
The very first call with your client or customer sets the initial tone over not only the overall call, but of the customer’s impression of the company. This is why it’s utterly important to have great, professionally trained employees answering calls from potential and existing customers. In the same way, it’s important.
If you need to contact another business’ customer service, do you enjoy sitting on the phone and listening to elevator music for 10 minutes? Most people don’t. It is your duty to provide the best response time to your customers. That way, they won’t feel frustrated if they need to call again because they know that an answer to the problem will soon come about. Receive support emails? Try to reply within a day.
- Focus on Reputation First
Spending money on marketing is lucrative for so many businesses that want to focus on short-term profit. This is the wrong approach. Treat your customers well and they will market your product or service for you. For repeat customers, you may even want to consider adding in a bonus product, free shipping, for example. Make your customers feel like you value their business instead of it being the other way around. By focusing less on marketing and more on customer service, you can grow your brand effectively without needing to spend much more money. Customers are the lifeblood of your business. Treat them well and see what happens.
Katie Morris is a freelance writer who has several years of experience writing in the commercial, marketing, and consumerism industries.
Featured images: License: Creative Commons image source
Marty Huggins
