Even during the cold months, it is of utmost importance to communicate a sense of warmth to your customers. A positive and profitable business relationship begins by showing you take care of your own.
Voicemails are the enemy of any small business looking to generate a personal connection with a current or potential client. Phone tag is not only annoying, but it affects how personable you seem. Unless you’ve got a rock-star voicemail recording, the customer is most likely going to walk away from the experience pretty disenchanted.
For this, we have a no-brainer solution: answer!
Take the time and invest in the manpower to delegate all phone calls to an actual person. You will be more likely to establish a connection and there is less chance that you’ll lose business! If the call absolutely must go to voicemail, be sure to showcase your company’s character and personality.
Wondering how your office person can answer more phone calls? Invest in field service software. We've heard from customers that our software can cut down on the amount of time a person spends on the phone by as much as 75%. With that kind of return, you'll be answering just about every call during business hours.
Understanding your customer’s wants and needs is not something that can be addressed overnight. There are Fortune 500 companies that spend millions trying to figure this out, so don’t kid yourself by thinking you’ve got your whole customer pool adequately scoped.
Try to utilize the power of compiling client data through mobile field service software applications. You can use these tools for field data collection and analyzing data points that are important to building customer satisfaction. Imagine a year’s worth or even ten years’ worth of data from past experiences to guide you through your next business venture!
Taking the time to make things personal seems counter-intuitive, at least when you think about the black-and-white nature of how business dealings are portrayed. You see it in TV and movies all the time.
“It’s just business, nothing personal,” is a trope that has been around for years.
It’s also a quick way to lose customers. Now more than ever, it seems that having a flair for friendliness is the trademark of companies on the rise. Do what you can to make every transaction seem significant. Instead of sending cut-and-paste emails, mail your customers a hand-written letter thanking them for their business. Little touches like that tend to leave almost as lasting an impression as the quality of your work.
It is nearly impossible to over exaggerate the importance of familiarizing yourself with Social Media outlets.
It is so important that I gave it its own paragraph. Social Media has become such a powerful tool for commerce that I feel summarizing it all in one blog post won’t cut it. For the sake of brevity, I’ll just say this:
If you don’t use one, use one. If you have one and you don’t use it that often, use it more often. Even if your clientele is made up entirely of baby-boomers who don’t use the internet, you should still sign your business up on any multitude of platforms, if only to get acquainted with how they operate. The best part is most of them are 100% free.
Take the necessary time and effort to connect with your client. Make monthly calls to check in. Facilitate a batch of thank you letters. Make a Facebook event for ‘Customer Appreciation Day’. It really boils down to how willing you are to develop a long-standing rapport with the people you serve, because that is who you are ultimately dealing with; people. Turning a potential customer into a life-long source of business can be a massive undertaking, especially when considering what it takes to just get your name out these days.
If you can manage to make a customer feel like they’re not just another stamped namesake on an invoice, you’re already halfway there.
Being warm is one way to generate more loyal, repeat customers for your field service business. But don't stop there. Download our free eBook, 20 Ways to Improve Customer Loyalty, to learn 19 other ways to generate loyal customers and grow your business.
