Building customer relationships to boost sales

Building customer relationships should be one of your top priorities. Several companies are looking for new and innovative ways to boost sales, but the best way to do this is by building customer relationships. How can you build customer relationships? Here are some easy tips to help you get started:

Tip # 1 - Customers are human
A common problem big companies have is forgetting who their customers are. They are so concerned with keeping their sales numbers at a certain level that they don't think about the actual people that purchase the product. Instead of just going through orders and organizing data into spreadsheets, take time to thank your customers. When you start automating everything, you forget about your customers and the hard work that they do. This can cause you to lose valuable relationships you have built with your customers in the past. You can still automate things; just make sure you are sending emails or thank-you letters to your customers. They need to know that the company still cares about them and not just their money.

Tip # 2 - Surveys and Rewards
Customers like to fill out surveys if they know they will get something out of it. Start offering discounts on your products to your customers to encourage them to purchase more and to provide you with some great feedback. This is a great way to boost sales because the customer is inspired to spend more money. Surveys provide your company with great information as it helps you get to know your customers a little bit better and it can help you improve on some of the existing processes at the company. When you start offering discounts or rewards to customers, they are excited and they feel appreciated. Don't do this all the time or else customers will start to expect it.

Tip # 3 - Customer Service
Your customer service agents are the face of the organization. They represent everything your company stands for so it is vital to your business to spend time hiring the right employees and then to spend time training them. To emphasize the importance of good employees, take a look at how Disneyland hires their employees. They tend to hire a lot of college students that are in-between semesters. They put them through a 8 week training course and many of them only end up working for the company for about 6-8 weeks. Why spend half your time training employees? This is because they train their employees to know their job extremely well so there won't be any questions when customers come to the park. They want their employees to have 100 percent customer satisfaction rating and spending more time on training allows them to get a high score year after year. Instead of just hiring a person that has the right qualifications for the job, hire people that come with excellent customer service skills as well. People with good customer service skills will boost your sales and keep your customers coming back year after year.

Tip # 4 - The Customer is First
One of the best rules to remember when you are trying to boost sales is that the customer is first. Your customers may be 100 percent wrong, but you need to make them think that they are always right. Have a good product return policy and a great customer policy to keep your customers coming back for more. Do little things to make them feel important like helping them out to their car with their purchases. How about sending email notifications when you have a new product launch? Keep your customers informed about your company to keep their interest in your company so they will continue to shop from you.