Happy customers mean a happy, thriving business for you. Your customers’ experience with your brand should always be a positive one. You have to create magical moments of truth throughout their journey.
How do you keep customers happy? You make sure to meet—even exceed—their needs.
It’s easier said than done, especially considering just how many different kinds of customers your business probably has. But it can be done.
As salespeople, you’ve been trained on how to engage your clients, establish a rapport with them, and build a (hopefully, lasting) relationship with them. But customer service doesn’t end with you. You are just part of a whole process that involves your entire organization.
To have excellent customer service, you have to have the whole organization on board.
So how do you enjoin the whole team so you can meet and even exceed your customers’ needs? Here’s how.
How to Meet—and Exceed—Your Customers’ Needs
1. Have a framework
Meeting your customers’ needs must follow a system, just like any other plans or strategies you have in the team. Make sure to set up a structure that allows you to align with sales team members and members of other departments that you’ll need to collaborate with, like Customer Service, Marketing, Sales Enablement, Product Development, Business Development, Tech Support, etc.
A CRM is a great way to start the collaboration process. You can create your own workflows and work with everyone and anyone in the team in real time.
2. Develop the culture
Make sure the whole team is aligned on what you are trying to do: putting the customers first. A customer-centric culture has to be developed within the organization. Everyone has to pitch in because excellent customer service requires everyone’s cooperation. Your own sales efforts will fail if Marketing doesn’t create the personalized content for your customers, or if Customer Service is not fully trained.
Everyone must have the customer in mind when performing their tasks. Strategic alignment meetings and constant coaching or training are just two of the things you can do to instill a customer-centric culture.
3. Know your audience
You can’t really develop and implement a full customer-first strategy if you don’t know who you’re speaking to. Who is your audience? By now you should have your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and your buyer personas. They are your target audience.
But knowing your customer goes beyond the demographics (age, gender, etc.) and stats (page visits, forms filled, etc.). Understand their behavior. Analyze their needs. If you want to really know your audience, you have to find out what will motivate them to make the purchase. Only then can you really strategize on how to effectively speak to them.
4. Make your customer service bullet-proof
The Customer Service and Support departments will have to be your strongest allies. You must have very clear and very high standards for these teams. They will be dealing with clients directly—before, during, and after purchase.
Hire the best. Meticulous training should begin with onboarding. Do not set them out to begin interacting with clients until they are 100% ready and competent.
Establish clear-cut metrics (communication guidelines, response time, etc.). Have guidelines on how to address the usual questions, concerns, and issues. Imagine all possible worst-case scenarios and guide them on how to perform under pressure.
5. Gather feedback on a regular basis
You have to get information straight from the horse’s mouth. There’s no better way of finding out if you’re doing a good job than asking your customers directly. Gather feedback from clients and customers regularly. You can do the process online or offline.
Listen to the good and especially the bad. This way you can keep doing what you’re doing right and improve on the things that customers feel you’re not doing best.
And while you’re gathering feedback, make sure to be an active listener. Really listen to what they’re saying. Some won’t be able to articulate what they want to say, so learn to understand what they mean. Read between the lines and/or read their body language.
6. Personalize everything
The content you give them, the presentation you make, the emails you send—everything must be customized to what they want to see, hear, and read.
Your service must also feel personal and special. Make them feel valued and appreciated—and part of your process.
7. Be honest
You know what they say: honesty is the best policy. This is true for customer service. Customers want transparency. If there are mistakes, own up to them. Apologize, take full responsibility, and offer a solution.
Do not make promises you cannot keep. Managing client’s expectations is not always easy; it’s much easier to tell them what they want to hear. But that will get you into trouble. Set realistic expectations; outline your exact deliverables; define all the terms and policies, even the fine print. Telling them now (during negotiation or selling process) than later (post-purchase) will serve you and your customer best.
Photo by NEW DATA SERVICES on Unsplash
8. Be flexible and resourceful
Your customers’ needs and wants change, and you must learn to adapt to these changes. You must continually find new ways to meet their needs and expectation, whether that means creating add-ons and new features to your product or service or fine-tuning it.
You can get information from customer feedback. Make sure to really listen to what they say, more than what others (non-customers) are saying. While you must also consider trends when developing your product or service, your customer feedback must still take priority.
9. Know what competition is doing
It wouldn’t hurt to scope out the competition. After all, your customer would choose either them or you.
What are they doing well? Then you have to do better in that area. What are they not doing well? Then make sure you’re doing that well—and highlight that fact. Make it an easy, no-brainer choice for the customer to go with you, instead of competition.
10. Go the extra mile
A customer files a complaint about the product he bought from you. The standard reaction would be to replace it. But why not go the extra mile? Offer to have someone set it up for the customer. Send how-to videos and other relevant content this time around. Add a personal note of apology. Throw in a freebie to make up for the inconvenience.
Think outside of the box and imagine yourself as the customer. What would make you even more satisfied with the service? Do the unexpected. This is the only way to exceed customers’ expectations.
11. Anticipate their needs
What’s better than meeting customer needs? Anticipating them.
Stay ahead of the curve by preparing for what your customers will need well before they even make it known. (Sometimes they don’t even know what they need or want until you show it to them.) Imagine how gratifying it will be for a customer to find the feature or solution on your product or service even before they ask for it?
Stay updated on how your clients are using your product or service. Try to identify the areas that may need improvement even before your customers call you out on them. Proactive research and product development will help you anticipate your customers’ needs.
Main photo by picjumbo.com from Pexels
