To Find Out What Makes Your Customer Tick, Just Click

by The Anderson Group
Email comments to info@theandersongrp.com.
 

These are extraordinarily difficult times. Businesses of every kind and size are doing all that they can just to stay afloat. So what advice can we provide that will help you navigate through the whitewaters of the present-day marketplace? The secret to survival is as profoundly powerful as it is profoundly simple: Stay close to your customer.

Staying close to your customers, while always important, is even more so during times of economic uncertainty. In order to provide them with the best possible products and services, you need to be acutely aware of what is on your customer’s mind. What are they thinking? What are they doing? What needs do they have today? What needs might they have tomorrow?

Your customer is your single most valuable asset, without whom you would have no business. Since it costs between five and ten times more to find a new customer than to retain an existing one, now is the time to focus on optimizing your customer’s experience, strengthening your relationship with your customer, and delivering on every brand promise you make.

Satisfying the customer—gaining your customer’s trust and kindling your customer’s loyalty—not only makes good business sense in the most difficult of selling environments, but it also paves the way for increased growth and profit the minute the economic tides change.

In this age of technological connectivity, the most effective and expedient way of staying in contact with your customer is social media. Here are some key statistics from a recent survey focused on Americans’ use of social media and their interaction with business:

  • 60% interact with companies using social media.
  • 93% say a company should have a presence in social media.
  • 85% say a company should not only be present but also interact with its customers via social media.
  • 56% say they feel a stronger connection with and better served by companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment.
  • 43% say companies should use social networks to solve customers' problems.
  • 41% say companies should use social media to solicit feedback about products and services.
 
(Source: 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study, from an online survey conducted Sept. 11-12, 2008 by Opinion Research Corporation among 1,092 adults comprising 525 men and 567 women 18 years of age and older. Margin of error +/- 3%.)

Web communications offer several options (blogs, vlogs, e-mail, Twitter, e-newsletters, wikis, forums, message boards, discussion boards, surveys, podcasts, videos, etc.) to let your customers know that you value them, and that you are here to stay! Some tips for communicating:

  1. Keep it Relevant, Make it Personal: Focus your communications on information content that is timely and useful. Provide your customers with information that will keep them informed and involved: alerts about special events, updates on new products or services, and “insider” knowledge that will be meaningful to them. Not sure what they want to know about? Just ask them, and don’t forget to get their permission to be in touch. Not sure how frequently they would like to hear from you, or where they would like to receive their messages? Internet? Cell phone? PDA? Other mobile device? Ask them that as well. Direct personal engagement requires a dialogue, not a monologue, so be sure that when you are talking, your customer is willing to listen.
  2. Take the Good with the Bad: Just as in any conversation, you must be willing to hear the good along with the bad. Being open to criticism and dissent affords you the invaluable benefit of learning what is working for your business or your product and what is not. Take your customers’ feedback to heart. Answer questions. Solve a problem. Ask how you can help. Responding with gratitude, honesty and passion are attributes of a virtuous company. Customers would rather patronize a company with which they have a good relationship than one that is not responsive to their needs.
  3. Show Them That You Care: Offer your valued customers something extra-special—additional information, a value-based discount, a trial-size of a new product, an opportunity to attend a special online or in-person event—anything that lets them know that you value their input and you value their business.
  4. Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide: There is nothing private about social media. Every word, every picture, every thought and every action are out there, 24/7, for the whole world to see. There is no way to control who will view your postings, or what they will do with the information once they receive it.  All the more reason to give careful thought to what you want to communicate, and then commit to communicate with honesty and informed intent. 

 

Successful use of social media opens up new avenues for communication with customers—and it works! Interested in knowing more about how several well-known companies have optimized customer retention by using the new media channels? Check out Social Technology guru Peter Kim’s extensive list of examples and case studies: www.beingpeterkim.com/2008/09/ive-been-thinki.html

Despite the economic downturn, the $385 billion Internet and mobile market continues to grow and is expected to do so for the foreseeable future, making it one of the biggest areas of opportunity for all types of business. Use it to your best advantage. Make customer communicating and customer listening two of your top business priorities.

When you thoughtfully engage customers using Web 2.0 technology, you are creating a partnership with your customers that will strengthen your relationship and help you survive and prevail, no matter what. By the time the economy has changed course, the winds of change in culture and technology will have shifted as well. Although we can only imagine what lies ahead for the advancement of social media and its applications to business, one thing is certain: staying close to your customers through effective digital communication, on their terms, in their language, with a message that’s relevant and true, is a crucial factor for achieving and sustaining business success.