Customer Relations: A Complete Guide for Small Businesses

Do you find that your clients express dissatisfaction with your business? Perhaps your customers buy from you once or twice and fade away.

A robust customer relations program could be what it takes to retain more of your buyers, keep them happy, and get them to purchase more from you.

This article explains what a customer relations program is, its potential benefits for your business, and common customer relations tactics.

What Is Customer Relations?

Customer relations encompasses all that a company does to engage with its customers and improve their experience with it. It can include everything from solving urgent problems in real time to devising plans to engage with clients in the years ahead.

Offering valuable products and services is only a part of small business success. Effective customer relations play an equal or even greater role, especially in competitive sectors when it can be difficult for businesses with similar offerings to stand out.

Today’s consumers are not just interested in what you’re selling them; they also care about how you sell it and what happens after you deliver it.

This has forced small businesses to focus more on customer service to meet today’s consumer expectations. A big part of this is using customer relations to build a mutually beneficial relationship with buyers that extends beyond the initial purchase. Everyone in your business who touches on the client experience, including marketing, sales, and customer service, plays a role in customer relations.

Proactive Versus Reactive Customer Relations

Customer relations includes both reactive and proactive activities.

• Reactive activities resolve issues reported by customers. This can include looking into missed deliveries and troubleshooting website issues. Being available to fix problems is essential for small businesses that want to build strong customer relationships.

• Proactive activities help ensure long-term customer relationships. This can include offering discounts reserved for customers and sending out newsletters with helpful content to keep your business top-of-mind when it comes time to buy again. The ultimate goal of proactive customer relations is to create brand advocates.

Customer Service vs. Customer Relations

Customer service and relations are two different functions, though they are related.

Customer service responds to buyer needs. It’s an inbound function that must be available to buyers in all interactions with your business.

Customer relations are both inbound and outbound. They address your organization‘s ability to react to issues to improve your customer interactions. They also involve proactively reaching out to clients to enhance their experience with your business.

Customer service is typically immediate, while customer relations are long-term.

How to Launch a Customer Relations Program at Your Small Business

Here are everyday activities you can easily implement that are typically part of a customer relations program.

Employee Training

Everyone who touches the customer experience should receive training on skills like active listening, professional communication, and problem-solving in your organization. They should also be adept at using the tools and software needed to do their jobs. You should offer ongoing education on your organization's standards, policies, and procedures so employees feel confident while serving customers.

Workplace Improvements

If you take better care of your employees, they will take better care of your customers. If workers are unhappy, they will not be motivated to do their best work.

Conduct regular employee surveys. They could help uncover workplace issues that make them unhappy so you can correct them. Go beyond this and have informal discussions with workers to stay on top of how they feel.

Enhance Knowledge Sharing

Create a knowledge base that includes information about products and services and answers to commonly asked questions. This will help prevent time-consuming searches for information, improving the customer experience. Buyers won’t have to wait for answers from sales and customer service reps, leaving them feeling more confident about buying from you.

Update Systems and Software

Are you using the latest customer relationship management (CRM), point of sale (POS), marketing automation, and other software to operate your business? It may seem expensive for small businesses to upgrade, but it’s almost always a smart thing to do. A relatively small investment in business automation pays off in a significant improvement in the customer experience, driving more dollars to your bottom line.

Offer Self-Service Opportunities

Some customers prefer to do things independently, with no human intervention. Others may want to conduct business during off-hours. That’s why it's critical to offer people the opportunity to do things on their own at any place, any time. This could include providing online chat functionality, the ability to book appointments, and enhanced direct sales capabilities. What’s critical is to allow people to interact with your organization in the ways they prefer.

Improve Accessibility

While some consumers prefer to handle things independently, others demand human support. That’s why it's key to regularly review and improve opportunities for person-to-person interactions.

• Is your chat function adequately staffed, or are people waiting too long for answers?

• What is your call waiting time, and could it be improved?

• Are you responding to emails and text messages promptly?

Regularly reviewing your interpersonal interaction stats and trends will allow you to identify better ways to serve consumers.

Show Appreciation

A superior customer experience requires delivering moments of delight and exceeding expectations. It’s a great way to build customer loyalty. One way to do this is by expressing appreciation and rewarding your best customers through a loyalty rewards program. Provide meaningful rewards like discounts, gifts, and unique experiences.

Track Customer Satisfaction

Request feedback from your customers regularly and develop a system for tracking and evaluating it. A net promoter score (NPS) is a good method for this.

Commit to acting on feedback. When you do so, your scores will improve, and you will know you're improving your customer relations.

Customer Relations: The Final Word

In today’s competitive market, businesses need every edge possible to stay ahead. Launching a customer relations program will better position you in the market for the long haul. Leverage the information and tactics in this guide to begin developing one so you can attract and retain more clients now and well into the future.