The Importance of Building Customer Relationships: 6 Tips

Customer relationships are the key to your company’s future. They are the core of your business and what makes your company thrive, grow, and stay connected to your community.

Because of this, it’s critical for you to nurture customer relationships. That’s why it’s necessary to take steps to improve your customer relationship management (CRM) and customer retention rates.

Here are some helpful strategies for creating a strong connection with your audience and ensuring a lasting relationship.

What are customer relationships?

Customer relationships are simply interactions you have with your customers. Managing customer experiences and perceptions at every touchpoint—not just when a customer has a service issue—is the core of building, and successfully keeping these relationships.

Key components of customer relations include communicating with customers through social media, marketing efforts, or other tools, building transparency into customer interactions, and personalizing interactions to help customers feel you’re addressing their individual issues.

Customer service is part of building relationships with your customers. It includes supporting customers when they have questions or run into problems with your products or services.

Customer service also involves many other touchpoints along the customer journey from prospect to customer, such as chatbot interactions and the checkout process on your website.

Each customer support interaction is a chance for your business to create positive engagement and build loyalty.

Types of Customer Relationships

Your business depends on strong customer relationships to drive sales and build your brand. Still, every customer and business is different, meaning the type of customer relationship you have will depend on the needs of your business and your target audience. Those needs can also change with time.

Here are four types of customer relationships you may experience and tips to create strong, long-lasting connections for each.

1. Transactional Relationships

These relationships are based on one-time purchases or transactions. You want to get your customers to return after they buy from you, so exceeding their customer service expectations is necessary if you want to develop brand loyalty.

For transactional relationships to grow, businesses have to think about customer service and customer satisfaction. Make sure your team always takes pride in using excellent service techniques to meet your customers’ needs. And, take it a step further by creating offers for new products that are personalized to what your customers are looking for—this helps boost repeat business.

2. Relational Relationships

In this kind of relationship, your business develops a personal, emotional connection with customers that goes beyond a single transaction. Personal connections built in this relationship helps your customers feel valued and appreciated by your company, which increases customer loyalty.

To grow strong relational relationships, businesses should prioritize communication and personalization. For instance, you can make an effort to follow up post-transaction, remember the customers’ name and preferences, send personalized emails or promotions, and offer special discounts or rewards for repeat business and increased customer lifetime value (CLV).

3. Long-term Relationships

Long-term customer relationships are created over time and can last for years or decades. With this kind of relationship, the customer trusts the business and feels comfortable enough to turn to them for long-term needs.

To develop and nurture long-term relationships, businesses should focus on building trust and loyalty. You can do this by providing consistent high-quality products or services, maintaining transparency with your clients in all interactions, and offering ongoing support and communication with your customers.

4. Collaborative Relationships

There is nothing quite like a true partnership between a business and a customer. In collaborative relationships, they work together to achieve a common goal, grow a business, or solve a problem.

For strong collaborative relationships, businesses need to prioritize having open communication channels. That means transparency every step of the way. Start by seeking feedback from customers, working to solve problems together, and offering rewards for successful collaborations.

Importance of Building Customer Relationships

Your business can have amazing products and services, but if you don’t have good customer relationships, you could struggle with finding, and keeping customers.

The reality is that creating positive customer relations is about more than just impressing people in the short term. It’s also about building customer loyalty and encouraging people to come to you to help them solve their problems in the future.

That same customer loyalty can help you when your business runs into trouble, such as a decline in traffic because of changes to SEO or because a new competitor enters the space. Your loyal customers are your core audience, your core teammates, and they’re there to support your business.

By building a strong customer base, you’re helping guarantee that your business will have return customers who provide you with revenue. You also create a network of customers who are likely to refer your business to others. And, when those people are also treated well? They’ll spread the word, and all of these people will continue to make purchases from your company over time.

Having positive customer interactions isn’t just about loyalty, though. Satisfied customers are more likely to leave positive reviews and recommend your business to others, too, meaning they’re working as organic marketers whether or not they know it. And, unlike those who might have been dissatisfied with your company in the past, these are the people who will sing your praises in a way that encourages others to try your products or services for themselves.

Keep in mind, though, that poor customer relationships may result in negative feedback and complaints that can ruin your reputation very quickly. Social media and review sites are easy to access, and one misstep can lead to a wildfire of negativity online if you’re not careful.

Finally, don’t forget that strong customer relations directly affect your business’s revenue and return on investment (ROI). Satisfied customers aren’t just going to leave a single positive review. Research has shown that they’re more likely to spend more for quality customer service experience (up to 16% more, just because your customer service is up to par).

How to Improve Customer Relationships

Every customer is different, and trying to make a good impression with one prospect isn’t necessarily what will lead to success with another prospect. Here’s what you can do:

1. Actively listen to customer feedback.

Actively listen to customer feedback through surveys, social media platforms, or customer service interactions, because your customers are giving you free information on what they need from you and the problems (or perks) that come with working with your business. Ask for specific feedback from past buyers and consider it when making improvements or changes within your products, sales processes, marketing, and general business processes.

2. Respond to customer inquiries in a timely manner.

Customers don’t want to wait for the answers they feel like they need right now. You have to put your customers first, focusing on bringing them the answers they need as soon as you possibly can. Make sure your team is trained to handle customers’ questions and has the resources it needs to respond efficiently.

You can also try Podium’s AI Employee, which responds to customer inquiries automatically within just minutes. And, when customers need a human connection? The AI Employee can route them directly to you.

3. Personalize your interactions with customers.

People don’t like to feel like they’re just another number to your business. You can take away that discomfort by personalizing your interactions with them.

Personalize interactions by addressing your customers by name, suggesting products or services that align with their past interactions with your business, and offering tailored customer support.

4. Offer incentives and promotions.

Customer engagement can be tough to get right, but by using tools such as rewards programs, incentives, and promotions, you can get them to want to interact with you organically. Discounts, loyalty programs, or referral bonuses are a couple of ideas you can use to help them feel special, but ensure you’re offering something your customers want.

As a helpful tip, keep in mind that the form of messaging with the highest open rate of any channel is text. Send your customers texts and get the word out more effectively than with other processes.

5. Be transparent and honest.

Customers want transparency, honesty, and integrity from the companies they patronize. Be honest and transparent about pricing and other areas of your business. And when there’s a problem, be sure to work with the customer to find a solution.

6. Continuously improve.

Finally, don’t be scared to put the time into improving your business. You have to be willing to invest in your services and make changes that make what you offer even better. Customers will tell you when something’s wrong, and it’s up to you to adapt to ensure better customer service in the future.

Regularly review your customer service policies. Be more efficient, and don’t be afraid to ask for feedback from the customers you worked with in the past to get the details on what did or did not work for them.

Ask for reviews as often as you can, and you will stay updated on how well your business is doing and if you need to make changes to help your customers have better experiences when they interact with your brand.

Improving customer relations is a must if you want your business to succeed. You can do your part by listening to customer feedback, responding to questions quickly, personalizing interactions, offering incentives and promotions, being transparent and honest, and continuously improving the way you work with the people who have turned to your brand for support.

4 Benefits of Positive Customer Relationships

The benefit of building positive customer relationships isn’t just that your customers are walking away happy. In fact, having positive customer relationships builds loyalty, leads to credibility in your industry, and so many other perks.

1. Better Brand Credibility

Customers don’t automatically trust the businesses they want to buy from. That’s why you have to think carefully about how you build a relationship with them. Place your focus on consistently delivering quality products and services. Develop a reputation of quality and great customer service. Be transparent, and always be trustworthy. Word will get around, and your brand will benefit from your actions.

2. Higher Retention Rates

For small businesses, good retention rates are critical to their success. To get higher retention rates among customers, focus on positive interactions every time. Good customer service doesn’t necessarily mean giving customers exactly what they want, but it does mean knowing what they need and being willing to be flexible in some cases.

3. Improve Customer Loyalty

Did you know that 93% of customers say that they’d make a repeat purchase from a company if they had great customer service? And, what’s even better about that is that happy customers are more likely than neutral or unhappy customers to send you new referrals. With great customer service and good experiences from others, those new referrals can also send you more referrals for maximum growth opportunities.

4. Increased Profits

Regenerate your revenue streams for higher profits by building better customer loyalty. When customers love working with your business, they’re more likely to make future purchases from you. Whether a customer is considering a product or already bought from you, focus on making the process a smooth one.

Take Your Customer Relations to the Next Level with Podium

Building good customer relationships takes time, but Podium is here to help you on your way. Use Podium to connect with customers, save time, and make more money.

Connect with customers faster with your new AI Employee, and make 30% more sales. Watch a demo and see how Podium can work for you.