Strengthening customer relationships is the key to success for every business in this fast-paced and competitive market.

“Nowadays, customers do not buy just products or services. In fact, their purchase decisions revolve around their experiences.

Nearly 86% of customers are willing to pay more if they are offered a better customer experience.

So, how can you strengthen your customer relationships?

To build customer relationships, you must focus on improving transparency, customizing customer experiences, and providing personalized support.

Here are the four best strategies and tactics to build customer relationships:

1- Personalize Customer Service

As per a study by Oracle, poor customer service is one of the biggest reasons why customers leave.

Customers want to be treated as humans and not numbers.

Around 48% of customers make impulse purchases after receiving a more personalized experience.

To build and improve customer relationships, you must:

• Observe customer touchpoints through multiple channels.
• Understand the browsing history and key demographics of customers.
• Focus on how to make a positive experience based on each customer’s unique needs.
• Follow up on a customer’s experience.

You can also personalize the customer’s website experience by tailoring what they see based on their interest.

On a personal level, you can send out personalized emails, interact more on social media, send personalized thank you, and create custom offers for your customers.

2- Offer Omni-channel support

You must provide a consistent experience to your customers through multiple channels, including a website, live chat, or social media.

As per a study by Adobe, businesses with the strongest omnichannel customer engagement strategies enjoy a 10% YOY growth, a 10% increase in average order value, and a 25% increase in close rates.

In 2020, the number of companies investing in the omnichannel experience has increased from 20% to more than 80%.

You can use a free tool such as the Zendesk ticketing system to offer exceptional support to your customers.

The best practices to provide excellent multi-channel service to your customers are:

• Ensure that your customer support pages are mobile-ready.
• Utilize social media platforms to bridge the gap between your business and your customers.
• Improve your response times to queries on social media platforms.
• Offer self-service solutions, such as FAQ pages on your website.

Besides, don’t forget to use a CRM. A Customer Relationship Management platform is knowing who your customers are, how they have been marketed to, and how they responded.

Therefore, integrating a CRM system helps you manage the activities around customer engagement to improve the customer experience and assist in customer retention.

You can use CRM tools, such as Hubspot and Zoho. Using CRM software help you in the following ways:

• Allow you to find and convert leads.
• Offer communication and follow-ups features.
• Help automate your marketing efforts.
• Establish effective coordination among different teams within the business.

Ensure to choose a CRM platform that is accessible on multiple devices, integrates calendar programs, email, and marketing.

3- Seek Feedback

Customers’ feedback and opinions are crucial in sustaining your business.

77% of consumers favor businesses that proactively invite and accept customer feedback.

Seeking feedback allows you to understand your customers’ needs, experiences, and pain points. Feedbacks provide you real insights into what you are doing well and which areas require improvement.

Now, how will you get quality customer feedback?

Provide your customers multiple ways to share their feedback. A few effective ways include:

• Telephone or email surveys
• Proactive live chat support
• Feedback forms on your site or via email
• Reviews on social channels
• Polls
• Online community
• Compliant system on your website

Asking for feedback about your customer’s experience, problems, or product quality shows that you are looking for ways to improve.

4- Enable Live Chat

Customers get disappointed significantly when they have to wait on businesses to resolve issues. Therefore, to improve your customer relationship, it is better to make support more accessible to them.

Almost 83% of consumers say the ability to move from web chat to a live conversation is desirable.

Additionally, 79% of customers prefer live chats as they offer instant responses.

Thus, live chat is a great tool. As per American Marketing Association, live chat has a 300% ROI and increases conversions by 20%.

Enabling live chat and chatbot support empowers your agents to offer instant solutions to your customers. There are several live chat plugins you can use on your site.

Apart from that, it provides the following benefits:

• Lowers the operating cost related to customer support.
• Improves one-time resolution with the help of visual engagement.
• Interprets common customer questions and suggests solutions.
• Provides intelligent autosuggestions.
• Enables you to see customers' screens in real-time.

Here are a few live chat strategies:

• Capture customer data before starting a chat.
• Provide a unified conversational experience.
• Identify common customer service Problems
• Program your live chat in line with your contact center workflow.
• Maintain chat transcripts.

Final Thoughts

The most important factor for the continued success of a business is its relationships with customers. Through positive word-of-mouth, your customers may bring in new clients and provide an overall boon to the business.

Thus, focus on improving your customer service and experience. Great customer service helps you build trust, improve brand awareness, gain customer loyalty, drive sales, and attract new customers.