Customer Service: Appreciation and Building Business Relations

Giv­ing a May day bas­ket of appre­ci­a­tion does not have to be for Moth­ers only.

Every­one likes to be appre­ci­ated and that includes your customers!  And it can be chal­leng­ing find­ing unique ways to show your cus­tomers that you appre­ci­ate them with­out being pre­dictable.  I came across a cus­tom of appre­ci­a­tion that comes in  May and has his­tor­i­cally been a fes­tive cel­e­bra­tion of spring.  The May Day cus­tom once observed in areas of the early colo­nial United States where bas­kets were made involved small bas­kets filled with flow­ers or treats.  The bas­kets were left at someone’s doorstep. The giver rings the bell and runs away. 

In your busi­ness, when was the last time you sur­prised a cus­tomer with a small token of appre­ci­a­tion?  Unlike in the above May Day cus­tom, you don’t have to run away.  And you don’t have to pro­vide a costly token to make it a nice sur­prise.  Show­ing cus­tomer appre­ci­a­tion or grat­i­tude for the busi­ness can go a long way in rec­og­niz­ing that the cus­tomer has made the choice to buy from you. 

Your cus­tomer can go any­where. Why should they buy from you?

Your mar­ket­ing plans should list your tar­get mar­ket and that should include your exist­ing cus­tomer base.  Is show­ing grat­i­tude and appre­ci­a­tion part of your mar­ket­ing plan?  It is eas­ier to keep your exist­ing cus­tomers com­ing back than it is to bring in new cus­tomers.  So a good por­tion of your adver­tis­ing should go toward them.  This is because you have already stared to build the rela­tion­ship.  You have already achieved a series of small wins when the cus­tomer noticed your adver­tise­ment, came into your store, asked about an item, and pur­chased that item.  These were all small wins because your adver­tis­ing was a suc­cess, your store appear­ance was a suc­cess, and you pro­vided good cus­tomer ser­vice that was suc­cess­ful so that the cus­tomer bought from you. 

By giv­ing a lit­tle cus­tomer appre­ci­a­tion, you can keep your com­pany name in front of your cus­tomer as a reminder of your rela­tion­ship.  It is a Win-Win sit­u­a­tion for both of you.  You get to remind the cus­tomer about your com­pany and they get an appre­ci­a­tion.  And it should be part of your sales and mar­ket­ing strategy.  

There is one com­pany that sends me a birth­day card every year with a small gift card as an appre­ci­a­tion of “thanks”.  I enjoy being remem­bered by this small token and of course love the gift card.  In turn, they get me back to their store where I usu­ally spend more than the small gift card.  We both win!

Hey shop­per, come back again…soon.

Do you have some way to keep in touch with the cus­tomer?  Are you doing any­thing to get your cus­tomer infor­ma­tion?  Can you pro­vide man­age­ment train­ing and employee train­ing that includes how to gather cus­tomer infor­ma­tion before, dur­ing and after the sales?  This can be chal­leng­ing with more and more peo­ple con­cerned about pri­vacy.  But if you develop trust by keep­ing cus­tomer infor­ma­tion secure and pri­vate and be hon­est about what you will use their infor­ma­tion for, you might be able to col­lect data directly from your cus­tomers to use in send­ing updates on sales and spe­cial events, distributing newsletters, besides mail­ing appre­ci­a­tion cards.  There are also ways to stay in touch through social media, such as hav­ing a Face­book Fan Page or Twit­ter account for cus­tomers to fol­low.  If you adver­tise in newslet­ters or mag­a­zines, you can run spe­cial adver­tis­ing pro­mo­tions or coupons with a spe­cial gimme.

Now that you have ways to stay in front of your cus­tomers, how are you using this infor­ma­tion to stay in touch?  Do you have a adver­tis­ing strat­egy that involves cus­tomer ser­vice and follow-up on the sales?  Can you call to ver­ify he is still sat­is­fied with a ser­vice?  Can you send a thank you card in the mail?  Have you told him about your Face­book page where there are spe­cial events and coupons posted?  I have seen store per­son­nel put a busi­ness card in the bag with each pur­chase.  Other stores give away pens, key chains, or other pro­mo­tional items.  In some cases, stores give pro­mo­tional items with a min­i­mum purchase.  Do you use pro­mo­tional items to keep your com­pany name in front of your cus­tomers?  And how about hold­ing a Cus­tomer Appre­ci­ate Event at your busi­ness location?

Don’t mouse around — there are plenty of cool items to use as tokens of appreciation.

Once your cus­tomer knows about your busi­ness and is famil­iar with your prod­uct or ser­vice, you still have to work on build­ing more wins to get more business.  Has he rec­og­nized the ben­e­fit of the sale?  Has he returned to your store to make another purchase? 

Does your cus­tomer know all of the prod­ucts you sell or ser­vices you pro­vide?  Sell­ing to that cus­tomer was an achieve­ment.  What else do you need to do to get more busi­ness?  Do you have a prod­uct cat­a­log, brochure or other mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als about your services?

I was recently in a store where the cashier was ask­ing every­one if they knew about the new addi­tions being made.  This was a great way for cus­tomers to know that there would be new prod­ucts and what those new prod­ucts would con­sist of in the future.  And the cashier was auto­mat­i­cally insin­u­at­ing that she wanted you to return.  Smil­ing with a pos­i­tive atti­tude and giv­ing help­ful infor­ma­tion is a great way to show appre­ci­a­tion while invit­ing a cus­tomer to return.

Although the cus­tomer may have bought a prod­uct or used one of your ser­vices, what more can you do to follow-up with the sale?  Can you send out a sur­vey or include a sur­vey with the order?  A nice token of appre­ci­a­tion for com­plet­ing a sur­vey can help encour­age a cus­tomer to fill it out.  Many com­pa­nies have included online links for cus­tomers to pro­vide feedback.  This helps the com­pany col­lect some basic infor­ma­tion about the customer.  In choos­ing an inno­v­a­tive way to keep in con­tact with your customer, consider what is in it for the cus­tomer to make it a Win-Win sit­u­a­tion.  What can you do to make it as easy as pos­si­ble for the cus­tomer to respond pos­i­tively while also show­ing appre­ci­a­tion and build­ing a bet­ter busi­ness relationship?