{"id":515,"date":"2015-04-29T07:56:28","date_gmt":"2015-04-29T07:56:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/csm210469\/?p=515"},"modified":"2016-04-05T16:28:55","modified_gmt":"2016-04-05T16:28:55","slug":"how-do-you-sustain-and-grow-your-customer-relationships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/how-do-you-sustain-and-grow-your-customer-relationships\/","title":{"rendered":"How Do You Sustain and Grow Your Customer Relationships?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The most important thing in business is to attract and retain your most profitable customers.<\/strong><\/p>\n\"Growth\n

In order to accomplish this feat, you must devise and implement a customer strategy that builds, fosters, nurtures and extends relationships with your customers.<\/p>\n

Your company profits only when the earnings from retained customers exceed the costs to acquire and to service customers over time.<\/p>\n

There is a strong correlation between long-term business success and long-term customer relationships. Successful businesses capitalize on every stage of the customer life cycle-from customer selection, to customer acquisition, customer retention, and customer growth.<\/p>\n

Once a certain level of trust and comfort has been established, most customers prefer to remain loyal to companies and their products.<\/p>\n

Customer selection and acquisition is just the beginning of the customer relationship life cycle. Ideally, your company should target only high value and low attrition-risk prospects.<\/p>\n

The cost to acquire a new customer is much greater than the cost to retain an existing customer. Depending on the industry, experts indicate that it is five to ten times more costly to acquire a new customer than it is to keep and develop an existing customer.<\/p>\n

In the retention stage of the customer’s life cycle, a company retains its customers by delivering on its value proposition. This ensures that the customer needs to look no further; that is the rationale for providing the highest-quality of service.<\/p>\n

When your customer relationship is based on trust, cooperation and collaboration, the customer is more willing to listen to your new ideas, try your new products\/ services, and considers you as a long term, trusted partner.<\/p>\n

A savvy business owner\/executive understands that it pays to nurture existing customer relationships. If a good working relationship has been established, then it is easier to up-sell and cross-sell your products\/services to this existing customer.<\/p>\n

If your customer’s business is growing, there is a good possibility that there will be an increased need for your products\/services.<\/p>\n

In the growth stage of the customer’s life cycle, increasing the value of each existing customer is the ultimate objective. Many organizations think in terms of the “lifetime value” of a customer.<\/p>\n

Customer growth strategies generally focus on increasing the share of each customer’s expenditures by expanding its company’s range of products\/services.<\/p>\n

It is crucial, however, not to lose sight of the importance of continually acquiring new customers. In other words, if your company becomes too dependent on any one or only a few existing customers, then the future growth of your company could be in jeopardy.<\/p>\n

So, be cautious that the growth in purchases by, one or a few customers does not represent too large of a proportion of your company’s total sales. Striking this balance, between servicing existing customers and acquiring new customers, is imperative.<\/p>\n

Creating and managing this balance can be a major challenge to management. However, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications offer solutions to this challenge. (CRM is the process of tracking and managing all aspects of a company’s interaction with its customers, including prospecting, sales, and service.)<\/p>\n

11 Ways to Sustain and\u00a0Grow Customer Relationships<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here are 11 ways\u00a0to sustain,\u00a0strengthen and grow your customer relationships:<\/p>\n

1. Email messages, newsletters, and surveys:<\/strong> Provide product\/service updates, promote goods and services, and communicate news\/events.<\/p>\n

2. Feedback:<\/strong> Ask for, capture, and act on your customer’s input.<\/p>\n

3. Insight:<\/strong> Research your customers’ markets, strategies, and goals.<\/p>\n

4. Customer loyalty:<\/strong> Implement loyalty, affinity, and rewards programs.<\/p>\n

5. Relationship building:<\/strong> Talk and listen to customers in order to maintain a dialogue and to build a trust based relationship.<\/p>\n

6. Be accessible:<\/strong> Make it easy for customers to reach you.<\/p>\n

7. Customer satisfaction:<\/strong> Implement a customer satisfaction policy that provides a way to resolve\/remedy problems and issues.<\/p>\n

8. Involvement:<\/strong> Engage customers in product development \/enhancement, via beta tests, focus groups, and pilots.<\/p>\n

9. Anticipate customer needs:<\/strong> Learn their business, their purchasing patterns, and their requirements for effective proactive solutions.<\/p>\n

10. Become an indispensable resource:<\/strong> Look for ways to add value, to be a real partner, and to help your customers achieve results.<\/p>\n

11. Help lines:<\/strong> Provide support, service, advice, and information.<\/p>\n

In building customer relationships, remember to value the “personal touch.” Make an effort to get to know your customer “as a person.” You will be surprised at how much you may have in common. Establishing personal bonds goes a long way toward building lasting relationships.<\/p>\n

Your efforts will be rewarded with repeat business, referrals, and satisfied, loyal customers.<\/p>\n

About the Author<\/strong><\/p>\n

Terry H. Hill is the founder and managing partner of Legacy Associates, Inc.<\/a>, a business consulting and advisory services firm based in Florida. Terry is the author of the business desk-reference book, How to Jump Start Your Business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The most important thing in business is to attract and retain your most profitable customers. Read on to discover how to accomplish this feat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":193,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/193"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7996,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions\/7996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}