Three Customer Relationship Building Tips

Building effective customer relationships are crucial to creating and maintaining customer loyalty. Every member of an organization should be continually looking for ways that they individually can enhance the bond between customers and service providers. These efforts can lead to enhanced customer and brand loyalty.

The following are three simple tips that anyone can use to better manage customer relationships and build stronger levels of trust.

If you seek trust; communicate it through your words and nonverbal cues.

Always act in the best interest of your customers. Listen to them, ask questions, anticipate their needs, deliver what you promise, and exhibit high levels of professionalism in everything that you do whether your customers are present or not.

Take the time to personalize your customer interactions and to make each customer feel special. Use a customer’s name often during an interaction, listen, smile, ask questions to show interest and strive to project a positive image. This can all lead to enhanced trust and helps ensure that the customer returns.

About Robert C. Lucas

Bob Lucas has been a trainer, presenter, customer service expert, and adult educator for over four decades. He has written hundreds of articles on training, writing, self-publishing, and workplace learning skills and issues. He is also an award-winning author who has written thirty-seven books on topics such as, writing, relationships, customer service, brain-based learning, and creative training strategies, interpersonal communication, diversity, and supervisory skills. Additionally, he has contributed articles, chapters, and activities to eighteen compilation books. Bob retired from the U.S. Marine Corps in 1991 after twenty-two years of active and reserve service.

Make Money Writing Books: Proven Profit Making Strategies for Authors by Robert W. Lucas at Amazon.com.

The key to successfully making money as an author and/or self-publisher is to brand yourself and your company and to make yourself and your book(s) a household name. Part of this is face-to-face interaction with people at trade shows, library events, book readings, book store signings, blogging or guest blogging on a topic related to their book(s). Another strategy involves writing articles and other materials that show up online and are found when people search for a given topic related to a topic about which the author has written.

If you need help building an author platform, branding yourself and your book(s) or generating recognition for what you do, Make Money Writing Books will help. Bob’s popular book addresses a multitude of ideas and strategies that you can use to help sell more books and create residual and passive income streams. The tips outlined in the book are focused to help authors but apply to virtually any professional trying to increase personal and product recognition and visibility.

Customer Service Strategies That Aid Customer Satisfaction and Retention

It seems like many organizations are spending a lot of time, effort and money try to impress or “wow” customers, rather than focusing on solid strategies for simply giving them what they want and expect. Unfortunately, a lot of people I know tell me that they are not impressed with all the razzle-dazzle of the latest technology and scripted responses used by customer service representatives. Instead, they just want service providers who are knowledgeable, empowered to act, can communicate effectively and make appropriate decisions in a service situation, especially if service has already broken down.

The following strategies can help accomplish customer satisfaction and potentially lead to more loyal customers.

Create an effective communication environment. One trend that seems to be gaining ground with a lot of companies is that they are actively trying to improve the systems that collect information from customers and communicate with them. Not only must service representatives communicate; they must also actively listen to what the customer is saying and address concerns, needs, and expectations promptly and professionally. Part of this communication is the integration of online and mobile technology processes that give customers a variety of options to access information and service twenty-four hours a day, all year long (24/7/365). All of this is in response to the recognition that there has to be a better response to life balance issues of customers who are demanding that someone be “on-call” to address their needs when they want service.

Provide enhanced service training. Concerned organizations are also working harder to train their employees to really listen to customers and effectively analyze what they are saying. Whether customers communicate in person, over the telephone or via one of the numerous technology channels, successful organizations are striving to better understand and address customer needs in a timely and professional manner.

Using technology that makes sense. In past decades, the use of computers has been integrated into nearly every aspect of business and service delivery. More recently, mobile technology and person data delivery systems have created a more tech-savvy customer base which assumes that service mechanisms, to which they have access and use daily, will be integrated into the service solution equation. Intuitive approaches, apps, and other technology-based mechanisms are being designed and used by many of the top-rated organizations in the 21st Century.

The key to effectively creating and supporting a truly service-oriented customer-centric environment in today’s world is to step back and analyze what the actual needs of customers are and then set out to find ways to address them. This gets back to the first point…actively listening to your customers.

For additional information, ideas, strategies on how to build stronger relationships with customers in order to help achieve customer satisfaction and build customer relationships, get a copy of Customer Service Skills for Success.

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