Are you in the process of setting up your business? You need to ensure you are making customers and potential customers feel warm and welcome. They need to feel secure in the knowledge that they are welcome as a person and not just a number that may potentially bring you a tidy profit. Customers always want to find that one business that they can keep coming back to time and time again, and of course you as a business owner should want that as well. If you do all of the following listed below you should have no trouble getting the repeat sales coming in thick and fast. Let’s take a look at how you can make your customers feel welcome.
Competent Employees
Every employee you take on should want to be in the business to help the customers. Customer service should be their number one priority. They need to be friendly, professional, and upbeat. If you provide an adequate level of training and further career development your employees will always be ready to face new and exciting challenges with your customers. You might not think training is worth it, but it makes sense in the long run. Employees who feel valued and challenged will stick around rather than going to look for work elsewhere due to feeling undervalued.
Remember this training can be completed at home at your employee’s own time and pace, there will be no need to miss days at work to go and do it elsewhere.
Online Help
Having a live chat function on your website can make customers feel automatically relaxed and completely at ease. A lot of people worry about having to speak to a customer service team member on the phone, this can cause a lot of worry and anxiety. Live chat software can help both the customer and your business. Recent polls have suggested that live chat is preferred compared to options like phone or email services. If people visit your website and live chat isn’t available this may put potential customers off purchasing from your business.
Having an automated chatbot can help people get through to the right department quickly and efficiently. It will ensure that you are answering key questions that could be standing in the way of them ordering from you, they might want to know the answer before they place an order with you.
There is another benefit that you might like to hear, live chats can save your business money in the long run. This is due to you not having to pay out for a large customer service team to deal with all customer queries.
One thing to consider is the type of live chat that you want. Live chats can be highly automated with virtually no employee interaction. Alternatively, you can think about introducing a live chat where customers will eventually speak with an employee. Advanced software can also allow extra features including ensuring that employees can direct the market to customers using the live chat. This can be highly personalized and provide real value so it won’t be seen as spam.
You can find out further information relating to online chat software by clicking the link and taking a look at the site. Here you can find various bits of information relating to online chat software and see which package will be best for your business.
The Right Website
When thinking about your customers you need to think hard about your website design. Your website is potentially the first thing they see in relation to your business so it needs to stand out and be easy to navigate. You need to remember that it won’t be just young people coming to visit your website, it needs to be accessible to all.
Your website design should really match the idea behind your business, for example, if you are running a health and wellbeing company then your website should promote this and be clean and tidy so your website matches the business. A good technique to remember when building your website is the rule of three, your customers should only be three clicks away from the page they are looking for on your website.
Content Is King
In terms of marketing, content is and will always be king. Content is also great if you want to ensure a high level of user engagement. If customers like what they see then they will stick around on your website for longer than a few seconds or minutes. Remember, the longer visitors stay on your site the more chance there is of them purchasing something.
When you create content for your site it is vital you think of the audience you are wishing to target. It needs to be appropriate, and relate to the visitors. If you are outsourcing to freelancers you will need to provide them with a style guide so they know what you are wanting. You should do this so the work they complete for you doesn’t seem out of place when you put it on your website.
Social Marketing
As a business, you should also think about how you can stay in touch with your customers away from your website and still keep them updated on different products or events. You can use social media marketing for this, you can create business pages on sites such as Facebook and Instagram. As a general rule of thumb when you are marketing through social media you should have the 80:20 ratio in your head. 80% of your content online should provide value to your customers. You must be sure to mix up the content so it doesn’t get repetitive and boring, this could lose you followers and subsequently customers. You could perhaps create polls and have discussions on your page to really engage with your customers and make them feel valued.
FAQs
If you have a frequently asked questions page on your website then customers can get an answer to their question immediately without having to wait for someone from your business to contact them with the response. Having a FAQ page can save you and your employees a lot of time as you won’t have to spend most of the day responding to the same inquiries. This is not the only benefit of having FAQs on your page, you are providing your customers with another way to get immediate responses. At the end of the day, an FAQ page can help your business gain sales and stop people from abandoning stuff in their baskets.
Before you create the FAQs you need to think of the questions that customers might need to know the answers to. For example, questions that may need answering could be ‘how long will delivery take?’ or ‘am I eligible for a refund?’ The questions and answers should be short and easily understood by everyone.
Another option for your website and FAQ page could be the use of a search bar. It can be frustrating if your customers are searching for something but can’t find it and you don’t have a search bar.
Reviews
Why not think about having a review and testimonial page on your website? This will automatically reassure customers that you are a safe trusted business that has returning customers coming back for more each time. Recent studies suggest that more than 80% of customers will check online reviews before they commit to a purchase of either a product or a service. A similar study found that customers trust online reviews as much as they do the words of friends or family members. So reviews are definitely of value to your business, but how can you obtain them, particularly early on when your business isn’t yet trusted?
Well, there are a few options that could be worth exploring here. For instance, you could consider a sampling service. A sampling service will involve sending out samples to users that can then review them. This usually includes people with a high level of reach such as bloggers and influencers online, they have a high following so your products will get noticed quicker.
Alternatively getting reviews can be just as simple as asking for them. When a customer completes a purchase, think about sending out a quick email asking for a review. A lot of businesses shy away from this idea because they are concerned about receiving negative reviews. While understandably mixed reviews are better than having zero reviews for your business. The problem with zero reviews is that it makes your business look untested and untried. Or worse, as though you are having negative reviews in your company. If you do get negative reviews, you need to make sure that you are tackling them head-on. Show your customers that you are listening to their concerns and that you are ready to make the right changes that they want.
We hope this gives you a good idea of how to look after your customers, providing them with the service they deserve. Remember, if you don’t make customers feel reassured and safe with their purchase then they will leave your website in search of a company that does. Don’t forget you are appealing to the same customers as thousands of other businesses. It is essential that you don’t fall behind the competition, stand out from the crowd and make those sales.
