One thing that can really help your business to take off and which can help to bring customers flocking back time and time again is great customer service.
If you trust your customers right and you build a connection with them, not only will they keep coming back to buy more stuff from you, but they will also be more likely to spread the word about your pompano to their friends and family, thus bringing in even more customers, too.
Building a strong rapport with your customers is one of the best ways to make them happy and reap the benefits of customer loyalty because when they feel like they know you and have a more meaningful relationship with you than they do with other businesses, they will naturally think of you ahead of the competition.
Great, but how exactly do you build a rapport with your customers? Here are a few ideas which have proven to be quite effective:
Know who they are
The first thing you will need to do if you want to build a rapport with your customers is to find out who your target audience actually is. When you know which demographics are most likely to be buying stuff from you, it will be much easier to tailor any interactions you have with them to be of interest to them. Good market research is not always cheap, but it will provide you with lots of insights you can use to tailor your customer service more effectively, which means it will give you an excellent return on investment.
Use live chats
You might be thinking that phone support would be better for building a rapport with customers than live chat, but actually, learning how to integrate online chat onto your website could be one of the best moves you ever make if you want to build rapport with your customers. You see, not only is live chat typically faster, which means customers are not in a bad mood even before they get to speak to you, but it is also a really good way of establishing connections, working out how q customer likes to engage and copying their style to mirror their behavior and make them more positively disposed to you. You can do this on the phone sure, but it’s not always easy to match spoken tone or read between the lines, whereas it’s a lot easier to fake it til you make it in text form.
Talk about their interests
Something that will definitely help you to build a rapport with your customers is engaging them in conversations about their interests. This used to be a lot easier in person when you could see that a customer was wearing a particular band shirt or carrying a specific book and generate a conversation using those things as a starting point, but it is still possible to do this when running an online business from home. How? By using social media more. If someone is following your company, it is easy to take a quick look at their profile and see they love art or Italian food or whatever. You can then drop in a few comments about that when dealing with them and it will be a good way to show you have something in common and get a rapport going.
Have a joke with them
Speaking of social media, using it to have a laugh and a joke with your customers is also a good way to build a rapport with them. The easiest way to do this is to post humourous status updates and pieces of content on various platforms. When your customers reply, maybe with a funny comment or pun of their own, show them your appreciation and get stuck on with another witty retort of your own. Laughter and shared jokes are a great way to make people feel at ease and part of the same crowd, so if you can do this effectively, it will definitely make them think more fondly of your business.
Ask them what they will be doing with the stuff they buy
Something that can often work quite well to build rapport is to ask the customers what they will be using the things they buy from you for. Obviously, this will not always work depending on what you sell, but for example, if they are buying a sweater from your store in the summer, you could ask them if they are going away on a ski trip or why they need such a warm garment or if they are buying art supplies from you, you could ask them what their next creative project is all about.
Basically, try to show an interest in your customers and what they are doing in relation to the things they are buying from you and it will make your business seem less like a faceless company that just wants their money and more like a trusted friend who really cares about them and what they are doing. Again this is easier to do in a bricks-and-mortar store than online, but it is still possible thanks to social media and the likes.
Send them a handwritten note
Some smaller companies find that building a rapport is something try can do by including a handwritten note to each customer inside their packages. The note can thank the customer for their purchase and maybe explain a bit about how it was made or why the business was started. This tends to work best for small craft businesses and family companies with an interesting story, but it can be very effective because it gives the personal tough even when the business is based online and there is no real-life contact between customer and business owner.
Share your own story
As a business owner, if you really want to build a strong rapport with your customers, one of the best things you can do is share more about yourself and your story. Talk about why you started your own company, what it has enabled you to do, what you are passionate about your products, and give as much detail about why you run the business you do as you can and this will really help you to connect. However, do not be afraid to get more personal and talk about non-business-related passions too. The more the customers know about you and the more well-rounded you seem the easier it will be for them to form a rapport with you and when they think of you as being more than just a business owner, but as a whole person who they actually like they will be more likely to support your business. Just try to stay away from revealing anything that could be too controversial.
Ask for suggestions
Asking your customers for suggestions on things like how you can improve your products and services or what new products they would like you to stock makes good business sense because the more you are catering to your audience, the more money you are likely to make.
It also makes sense from a rapport-building perspective because your customers will feel more valued if you take the time to ask them what they think than they otherwise might. It will also provide you with the chance to spend more time engaging with them and getting to know them as people, which is always a bonus too.
Of course, if you are going to ask for their opinions, it is important that you actually take the time to implement some of their ideas because if you are always asking but never taking suggestions on board, they will become very quickly disillusioned.
Say something nice about them
If you are dealing with customers face to face or even over Zoom see if you can find something genuine to compliment them about whether it is the beautiful earrings they are wearing, their smile that lights up the room, or the way that they introduce themselves. Customers love to get compliments and they will feel more positively towards you if you give them one, but at the same time, most people are able to tell when someone is buttering them up and they will not like that, so a compliment needs to be as genuine as possible if it is to do the trick and make them feel a stronger rapport with you.
Building a rapport with your customers will make them like your company more and that means they are more likely to become regulars, more likely to recommend you, and more likely to help you build a strong business reputation which is exactly what you need if you want to succeed as a businesswoman. So, take it seriously, and try to implement as many of the ideas above as you can possibly manage.
Building a rapport with your customers will take time and effort, but it will be worth it when they think of you as more than just another business.
