Delighting your customers is one of the best and most satisfying parts of inbound marketing. Cultivating happy customers is what gets customers to become champions of your brand by spreading the word and starting the whole buyer’s process over with someone new. It’s word of mouth, really, but on steroids.
The important thing isn’t winning… it’s avoiding detection.
But as we’ve mentioned before when we defined the 3 pillars of creating excited customers, getting your customers excited enough to spread the word doesn’t just happen after the sale. It’s a process that happens at each phase of the buyer’s journey.
So what are some of the things you can do as a business to ensure that you build trust and relationships with happy customers? Here are some tips that you can employ internally to make sure that you’re creating the proper environment that not only serves your customers, but your employees as well:
1. Start By Delighting Your Employees
Employees and customers are the two most important assets of any business. A happy employee will create happy customers and allow you to sustain those relationships. No customer can fall in love with a company if the employees they interact with don’t love the company first.
2. Educate Your Employees
The core of any great brand is built on one great ingredient – serving its customers. Customer service is not something that should be packaged into a department and shoved into a corner to bang on the phones all day. Customer service needs to be priority number one – from the president, to product, marketing or sales staff to the guy working the graveyard shift in the maintenance room.
Come on Gary, you gotta want it.
The reason why you need buy in from every level of employee is because every interaction that someone has with your company is part of an overall experience that will ultimately shape the view that a person has of your brand.
3. Empower Your Employees
We just mentioned how everyone at the company needs to be on the same page. To do this, everyone needs to understand who the company is serving. This is why we have business personas, so that anyone can identify who you are trying to serve and delight. With the proper hiring and employee education process, you can empower employees to do this on their own. They’ll be able to solve customer problems, provide recommendations and be excited and enthusiastic when they interact with people.
4. Listen To Your Customers
By collecting the right data you can see exactly what it is that people are saying not only about you directly, but also the areas that you company can provide expertise. You can use this data to educate and empower your employees further. For example, use social monitoring as a way to listen to what people are saying about you. Use this feedback to improve customer service and even reach out to people with your expertise. When doing so, it’s important to be sincere. Listen without having an underlying agenda and don’t worry about the sale. Be empathetic and helpful.
5. Start Asking Questions
Once you’ve begun reaching out and establishing a trusting relationship with someone, you can start asking them questions about their problem. Knowing more about the issue by asking Who, What, Where, When, Why and How questions will help you educate them and improve their experience.
6. Help & Educate
Now that you’ve listened to the person’s needs and asked them the right questions that will help you understand their situation, now is the time that you can start to educate and empower them with helpful information. If your employees can become problem solvers for the right personas, that will help build trust during every phase of the buyer’s journey and exceed their expectations.
7. Follow Up
Don’t assume that customer loyalty is sealed at the point of sale. Always follow up in a timely manner with customers after they’ve made a purchase and make sure that all of their issues have been resolved. Remember to exceed their expectations.
By following and practicing these customer delight guidelines you can start getting everyone at your business on the same page and creating exceptional inbound experiences that your customers will love.
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