The benefits of great customer care

Read any business related book and the chances are you will hear about the lifetime value of a customer. In simple economic terms, we are constantly told that it is cheaper to retain an existing customer than to constantly find new customers. This is easy to see as you’ve done the hard work of nurturing, educating and closing a client which is often the most time consuming element. From this point onwards, upselling or cross selling should be far quicker, cheaper and easier than finding a new customer.

Yet, for many businesses, the post sales process or the customer care journey is something which is neglected and not optimised. Effectively, many businesses are leaving so-called, “money on the table” when it comes to building long term relationships with customers and shifting clients to loyal, brand evangelists.

Now, you may be thinking why are businesses doing this and surely it makes more sense to provide great customer care once you’ve converted a client. The simple reality is that most businesses are not set up correctly for the post sales process and place most of their energy, focus and resources on securing new clients.

For example, think about local businesses in your area and you can probably remember lots of times that you’ve seen their ads, both in digital and print format, trying to entice you to purchase their products or services. In comparison, think about the same businesses and try to recall how many of these businesses have tried targeting you with the same enthusiasm/precision with further offers once you have spent money with them. The chances are, you’ll be able to see a clear distinction between how the business markets itself to new customers and existing customers.

Setting up a customer care process
In an ever changing world and business landscape, most decisions should be based on data and insights, although there is always space for intuition or “the gut feeling”. The vast majority of businesses are capturing more and more data about their customers but unfortunately they are not utilising that data in their post sales process.

For instance, businesses now hold data concerning your name, address, contact number, email address, gender, birthday, buying preferences, payment methods etc to name just a few. These insights or data points can and should be used by businesses to build strong and long term relationships with you as a customer.

A simple example could be sending you a personalised handwritten card/gift voucher in the post before your birthday to incentivise you to visit their store and make a purchase. Something as simple as this could help differentiate one business over another and add a personal element to the interaction.

Another example could be rapid responses to customer communication such as emails/telephone calls/live chats and going above and beyond your customers expectations. Companies like Amazon have been championed for their great customer care and it’s something that every business can actually do, providing they have a will to concentrate resources on this area of their business.

Reaping the benefits as a business
We have briefly discussed the benefits to a business of investing in a customer care programme with regard to the economic side. However, there are also many intangible benefits of providing great customer care that can help a business in terms of positioning, branding and even competitiveness.

If we start with positioning, most businesses that focus on customer care tend to be large businesses. We have all seen the rise of customer care via twitter and how this can be handled well and badly from a public relations standpoint. However, even as a relatively small business, providing great customer care can help any business appear to be larger than what it actually is. This can help businesses when it comes to building long term relationships with their customers as well as reach new clients in the future.

Customer care can help a business with their image and branding. For example, constantly communicating with customers about products/services that may interest them or sharing success stories and community projects undertaken can go a long way to cultivating a positive brand message. Added to the mix could be a standardised process for collecting customer reviews via our Reputation Management Platform and any business can start to leverage their customer relationships.

Finally, many businesses fail to acknowledge the competitive edge that having great customer care can give their business. In an ultra competitive market, many businesses are looking at ways to differentiate themselves from other local businesses. With most businesses not having a scalable and targeted customer care process in place, any business that does concentrate on this area will automatically stand out from the crowd.

Summary
As we have seen throughout this blog, it is not difficult to maximise the lifetime value of existing customers by providing great customer care. It is important for every business to understand that exceeding the expectation of their customers can go a long way to providing both tangible and intangible benefits to both parties.

To find out how you can launch a Digital Agency and help local clients with all aspects of their business, please contact our team today.

Until next time, take care.