Every business lives and dies by how it manages customer relations. Companies that manage this relationship well can grow consistently for number of years. We have seen this with customer focused companies such as Amazon, Southwest Airlines and Ritz Carlton. Think about the great customer service experience you received from any such companies and you will understand what I am talking about. On the other hand, companies that do not manage customer relationship well can lead to their own demise in a short time.
There are two facets of managing customer relations – emotional and tactical. Emotional aspect of customer relationship deals with how you interact with customers – both online and offline. It’s about how you set and manage their expectations about your business. The goal for emotional relationship is to create a bond with your customers. Great brands such as Apple focus on creating this bond. Tactical aspect of customer relationship deals with day-to-day interaction with existing and potential customers. It involves such tasks as keeping track of your customer contacts, staying in touch with them on a regular basis, managing customer leads and so on. To grow successfully, businesses need to manage both facets of customer relationship well.
Emotional Relationship
You can manage emotional aspect of the relationship by creating great products that customers cannot live without and by producing memorable marketing campaigns. You also need to ensure all aspects of customer interactions are handled with unmatched quality and integrity. Your ultimate goal here is to create a long lasting emotional attachment with customers that will make it very difficult for them to leave you.
Tactical Relationship
To manage tactical aspect of the customer relationship you need to keep track of your current and prospective customers, send mailings and other marketing material to them on a regular basis. You also need to manage the leads you receive from tradeshows and other avenues. Technology can help manage this tactical aspect of customer relationship to a great extent. Customer Relationship Management tools such as Zoho CRM have matured over several years and provide functionality that makes it easy to manage customer relationship effectively. Many of these software providers have cloud based software so you do not need advanced technology background or large upfront investment to deploy and maintain them. They also provide reasonable monthly pricing that makes it economical to use them even for small business owners.
In summary, to grow your business and position it for success in the long-term you need to handle both emotional and tactical facets of customer relation well. What do you think? Any success stories you would like to share with us?
