Building Stronger Customer Relationships in Uncertain Times

Your customers may be on self-quarantine, but that doesn’t mean you can’t stay connected and continue providing excellent service.

During this time, there are many questions that arise around how you should move forward:
• Do you continue working as normal?
• Should you address the situation at hand?
• Do you communicate the measures you’re taking as a brand or make yourself scarce in the inbox?
• Should you push off that large announcement or new product release?
• How much communication is enough and how much is too much?

At Ebsta, we talk a lot about having empathy – for each other, for our community, and for our customers. As you contemplate the best way to communicate with your customers and as we collectively navigate this crisis, we’ve put together a few smart strategies for businesses to keep their customers engaged and in the loop, and how to effectively build stronger customer relationships.

Be proactive

As businesses grow more worried about COVID-19 and an extremely volatile market, both short and long-term concerns increase. If you proactively reach out to them with support, you can help with immediate challenges and avoid irreparable long-term mistakes. Use customer data to make your messages personal and relevant to their specific needs and circumstances. And, increase the frequency and speed of your communication across all channels.

Focus on serving your customers through digital channels

You may already offer phone and email support to your customers, but now is the time to increase your customer service capabilities and ensure your customers can reach you — no matter where they are.

Customer frustration spikes significantly when having to wait on businesses to resolve issues. So if you want to improve your customer relationship, there’s no better way than making support more accessible to them.

Live chat is a great tool for this. The American Marketing Association showed live chat has an ROI of 300% and increases conversions by 20%. With live chat and chatbot support enabled, you can empower your agents to offer instant resolutions.

Create training tutorials

Many people are at home reading and watching news about the recent COVID-19 events. Get their minds thinking more positively by creating helpful, relevant content. Use video to create training tutorials for customers based on your business’s specialty. For example, SaaS companies can post tutorials on how to make use of their software tools.

Creating videos allows your business to remain relevant and helpful to customers who need entertainment at home. Create and share humorous or entertaining videos that take your customers’ minds off of negative current events. So ask yourself, how can you provide value to your customers virtually?

Update your social media pages more often

Now is a great time to be active on social media. Share entertaining videos, provide product updates, or share industry news. Posting on multiple outlets allows you to build your awareness and gives your customers a sense of what your company values are.

Your company pages are a great representation of your business and brand. You can use this time to update the pages to establish your brand’s identity and build a stronger connection with your audience. If you haven’t yet decided what voice you’d like your brand to speak in when writing content for your audience, brainstorm ways to communicate with your audience in a captivating way.

Host live events

If your business canceled an event due to the pandemic, or if you have the resources otherwise, host a virtual event. Market your event by posting about it on social media, your website, and via email. Share the date and time of the event and encourage guests to dress the part. Attendees can enter the event via video chat and mingle from their houses.

Build trust through transparency

Many companies shroud their operations in secrecy, leaving customers in the dark as to how they function. While companies may have a good reason for doing this, customers might not understand what exactly they are trying to do. That’s why many Marketers highly recommend earning customer trust by letting them in on information that you can share.

This is particularly true when it comes to information such as your brand’s affiliations or pricing. People like to know who they’re dealing with, and whether you openly divulge this formation or not, customers will find a way to get it.

The last word

Building long-lasting customer relationships is a critical business skill in a world that’s rapidly becoming more competitive. If you want your brand to stand out, give customers reasons to care about you. That means going beyond and truly optimizing your customer relationships, making use of a number of different factors. Start on your way by experimenting with the tips shared in this blog. Remember, every business is different, but the core principles of success will always remain the same.

So, what are you waiting for? Go and optimize your customer relationships today.