Customer relationships can determine whether a business is profitable and survives. While it requires years of effort to build up a good company reputation, all it takes is one serious mistake to jeopardize the customer relationship. This is why it is crucial to invest in establishing and cultivating customer relationships.
The Four Cs Of Customer Management
When it comes to customer management, we look at four aspects – the 4 Cs: customer focus, customer satisfaction, customer retention and customer lifetime value. A stronger customer focus – i.e. giving a more substantial weighting to the wishes and needs of customers – leads to greater customer satisfaction. This in turn results in higher customer retention rates. Ultimately, customer value also increases over the years.
Tips For Successful Customer Management
The following five tips will help you to optimize customer management in order to meet the wishes and needs of your customers in the best possible way.
1. Adapt Your Strategy
Be guided by your customers’ wishes and adapt your targets and strategy accordingly. These include factors such as customer communication and scheduling, but also customer satisfaction itself.
2. Get Resources In Place
Successful customer management calls for resources: personnel, financial and technical. Do you have enough employees to look after your customers? Do your employees fit the ideal profile to provide customer support? How is customer data maintained? Clarify what resources are needed and get them in place.
3. Focusing On Customers
The customer must be at the centre of all entrepreneurial thinking and acting. Surpass expectations. Surprise your customers from time to time and respond openly and flexibly to special requests. This will ensure that you win your customer’s trust.
4. Controlling
Collect customer data and analyse it. The more you know about your customers, the more contented and happier you can make them. Evaluate which customers account for the main share of your sales. Invest in loyal, high-volume customers and bind them even more closely to your company.
5. CRM Systems
As the number of customers increases, customer management will become more and more complex and intricate. This makes it all the more crucial to keep track of everything. CRM systems are suitable for such situations. They help you to collect and analyse customer data.
