7 tips for better customer care
Customer focus is essential for the successful development of your business. One of the ways to make him feel enticed to come back to you is to let him know that you are 100 per cent focused on him.
How? By using proven customer relationship follow-up practices to implement quality support and an optimal customer file.
OK, but how can you prevent your sales reps from having to deal with complex and time-consuming sales management? Be inspired by our 7 tips for taking care of your customer relationship in this article...
Customer focus: problems
The customer is always right, but it is not enough to build customer loyalty. It is a matter of adopting attentive behaviour that shows how he is unique and special to you:
- listen to his expectations
- be attentive to his reactions
- respond to his requests
What behaviour should you pay attention to?
Your customers send you a number of signals that it is up to you to pick up on: buying behaviour, product choice, habits, preferences..... All of these are sources of information to be deciphered by cross-checking them in tables for analysis.
Why do a customer follow-up?
Knowing your customers better will help you to satisfy them better. The goal is to build their loyalty so that they will turn to your services again, think of you for a new purchase or recommend you to their friends and family. This therefore requires a high degree of personalisation.
Seven ways to pay attention to your customers: Examples
1/ Carefully collect customer data
A complete customer file, but also the history of all services, requests, invoices and promotions are all elements of customer lifecycle monitoring. Which purchases were made, when, how and when after-sales service had to be provided, were there any complaints and we could go on with examples.
In fact, maintaining contact with potential customers involves remembering previous interactions. Once again, the software is a reminder. On TeamSystem CRM, for example, the history is stored and associated with each of the contact sheets.
2/ Optimise contact management
To get to know your new customers, start by trying to understand them. To do this you need to contextualise: what are their problems? Their daily reality? The information they are looking for? Identify a theme or problem common to most of them and try to act as a pain reliever.
How? In your e-mails, for example, or on your blog, publish interesting content: a way to interest your customers while demonstrating your strengths and expertise.
Read also: How to improve CRM through emailing
Integrating CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software is truly a game-changing choice. Lead scoring techniques, such as the one proposed by Teamleader, allow you to establish a qualified follow-up of your customers and prospects. It is based on business parameters that are defined upstream. The CRM tool triggers an alert and alerts you in the event of changes: a simple and effective way of keeping up to date with your customers' news.
3/ Customise your approach
The art of business management is knowing how to be precise: the right offer, to the right person, in the right place, at the right time. Difficult....It is about studying the customer journey to increase awareness and thus optimise the customer experience.
Satisfaction surveys, loyalty programmes, customisation of the offer are all customer follow-up techniques to be considered.
To personalise your relationship with your customers, start by customising your CRM tool to look like you.
Learn more about the customer journey
4/ Take care of relationships
Listening to your customers also means providing them with the means to communicate with you. If they need you, how can they get in touch with your team? If they encounter a difficulty, to what extent can they find a solution?
This availability, however strategic, can take the form of a support service in various forms: ticket interface, web portal, hotline, service number, preferably free, or chatbot.
But the customer must also be able to easily access his documents: have a dedicated space to consult his invoices and quotes, receive notifications. The company can then track interesting statistics, such as document opening, response rate, to adjust scoring and decision-making.
And if accessibility is important, so is responsiveness. How long will it take for your customers to receive a response? If the delay depends solely on technical support, it can vary, depending on the influx of telephone enquiries.
Hence the interest of FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) and forums. The user community then becomes a force. And an answer, given once to one person, can be useful to all those who encounter the same difficulty later on.
5/ Ask your consumers questions
A customer satisfaction survey is a way of assessing the relevance of your offer while demonstrating your interest in your customers. This is an opportunity to take the decision to reposition your offer, if necessary, and to identify your potential ambassadors by building a network around your brand.
More on consumer feedback
6/ Initiate follow-up actions
For good customer service, the question of effectiveness over time is essential. It is not a matter of solving an issue 'once and for all'. The challenge is to satisfy the user so that he comes back to you over time.
Given the volume of your database, this is a difficult task. Unless management software allows you to control everything. Pipedrive is one of the most comprehensive tools on the market, with a very wide application ecosystem, including marketing automation features, to automate marketing actions, such as sending emails, reminders, without losing sight of the uniqueness of each customer.
7/ Monitor the situation
Similarly, to reduce your sales team's stress in prospecting, a CRM with notification management is invaluable, such as noCRM.io (formerly You Dont' Need A CRM). The CRM tool synchronises with sales staff orders and the pipeline view allows you to manage opportunities and access history.
Why follow-up software for your customers?
The advantages of a sales management tool for customer follow-up
In summary, a CRM or sales management software allows you
- the collection and storage of all commercial information concerning the customer and the company's activity
- facilitated internal communication and collaboration thanks to the centralisation of customer data, for all departments involved directly or indirectly:
- commercial
- marketing
- communication
- invoicing
- support
- quality
- the fluidification of sales processes through access to standardised and accessible documentation
- optimal visualisation enabling team management, planning, actions and interventions
- dashboards with a global view of activity, promoting better sales reporting
- automation of repetitive tasks (reminders) and key notifications (birthday, purchase, sponsorship)
The additional benefits of SaaS software, like all those presented in this article, are:
- constant updating of functionalities, in particular to RGPD standards
- interoperability with other software, such as marketing or accounting software, allowing multi-channel tracking, so that important information is not lost from the customer journey
- mobile working
- real-time synchronisation
Are you convinced then that the customer deserves your best attention?
There are free business management solutions available as SaaS, but pay attention to ease of use and terms and conditions. Most of the time, these are open source software, which you can use and configure freely. However, this will require a solid technical background to do so. Other free software is generally only available for a specific period of time or on a limited basis, such as in terms of number of leads.
Customer focus is essential to create successful and sustainable customer relationships and starts with business development. It is necessary to provide oneself with the means, both material and operational, of quality to offer them what they deserve!
Article translated from Italian