It is very important to find ways to delight your customers. One of the vital areas any SME in Africa should strengthen consistently is its customer service. Today, running a successful business goes beyond closing sales, you have to keep finding new ways to keep your customers happy. A happy customer will most likely become a repeat buyer, hence, increasing the overall profit of your business.
Another benefit that comes with delighting your customers is that happy customers tend to share their awesome experiences with their loved ones. No form of advertising grows a business faster than “word of mouth” advertising. The reason for this is that people tend to believe the recommendations of their friends.
Delighting your customers can be if you are working with a tight budget. This is why we have put together some ways to delight your customers without spending so much.
1. Listen To Your Customers
One of the ways to strengthen your customer service is to encourage customer feedback. One of the effective ways you can do this is by creating a feedback form that will allow your customers to voice their opinion about your products and services. Your customer feedback form should be simple and fast to complete. Listening to your customers gives you an idea of the aspects of your business that requires immediate attention. It also gives them the impression that you value their opinions. The best part is that encouraging customers’ feedback costs little or nothing. If you want to keep your customers happy, you have to find creative ways to listen to them.
2. Do Your Best To Meet Reasonable Demands
You should know that not all customers’ requests are reasonable. However, you must learn to give everything within your power to fulfill the reasonable ones. Why? For starters, meeting reasonable customers’ requests is one of the most effective ways for any SME in Africa to keep its client base. Secondly, meeting the reasonable demands of our customers compels them to share their amazing experiences with their friends. Also, it helps in building trust between your customers and your business. They are convinced that you’ll solve whatever problem they have because you have done it before.
3. Refuse To Make Promises That You Cannot Keep
One of the ways to keep your customers happy is keeping your promises. On the other hand, failing to keep your promises will make your customers unhappy. You should never be compelled to make promises that you cannot keep. Customers do not want to hear excuses about why you couldn’t keep your promises. To them, keeping your promises is one of the ways to measure your business integrity.
Many business owners fall into the trap of making promises that they cannot keep. While this may help solve the immediate problem, the inability to keep your promises will cost you your customers in the long run. Whenever you have to make promises to your customers, promise a little below what you can handle and exceed their expectations. This way, they are more impressed that you went beyond your comfort zone to make them happy.
4. Learn To Apologise Quickly
One of the characteristics of excellent customer service is knowing when and how to apologize to your customers. Learn to apologize immediately when you realize that your customer is having a bad experience. Most customers tend to know when you are offering a heartfelt apology, so, do your best to be sincere about it. There is no need to beat around the bush if your business is responsible for the bad experience your customer is having. Take responsibility, apologize, and quickly find a way to fix the problem. Avoid getting into an argument with your customers. You must give them the impression that you value their opinion and that they have the right to complain about any form of dissatisfaction.
5. Give Your Customers Handwritten Thank You Notes
We live in a world where technology has simplified everything for us. People can simply send emails and texts to anyone in their contact in a heartbeat. Gradually, we are witnessing the era of writing notes fade. One of the ways to make your customer feel special is by purchasing excellent stationery to write a thank you note to your biggest and newest customers. It gives them the impression that they mean a lot to you. Taking out time from your busy schedule to write them a thank you note makes them feel like an integral part of your business.
6. Make Contacting Your Business Easy
No one wants to be on the other side of a phone call with an automated phone system. For any SME in Africa to have happy customers, they must make contacting them easy and straightforward. Your customers do not want to hear a machine say “Please hold on, your call is important to us”. If their call is really important to you, you or a member of your team should be at the other side of the phone call telling them that. Only turn on your automated phone system during closing hours.
7. Send Birthday Gifts And Greetings To Your Customers
Sending a special birthday greeting to your customers is one way to let them know that they mean a lot to you. A good customer service desk will have a database that contains vital info about its customers including their birthdays. There are lots of online software that allows you to schedule messages to your clients. You can create personalized birthday messages and input them into any of this software so that when the time comes, your scheduled messages will be delivered to your customers.
Conclusion
You don’t have to break the bank to delight your customers. Truth be told, the most effective way for any SME in Africa to satisfy their customers is through excellent customer service. In most cases, delighting your customers is cost-effective and sometimes free. All your customer needs to be happy is to know that they are valued and they can come to you whenever they have a problem with the assurance that you will fix it.