Sage Blog

You know your business inside out, but do you know your customers inside out?

Acquiring new customers is five times more expensive than keeping the ones you already have, so customer turnover could be the largest financial burden for your business. By getting to know your customers and learning how to make them feel special, you build up a detailed picture of them and take steps towards retaining their business.

So, what CRM software can you use to help you know your customers better? How can you increase customer satisfaction? And what can you do to make customers feel special?

We’ve recently produced a guide to improving customer loyalty and here our some of our ideas for making your customers feel special.

What is customer satisfaction?

In short customer satisfaction is a measure of how your business meets or surpasses customers’ expectations.  It means retained customers generate long-term business for you, delivering positive feedback and great testimonials. Without it, customer churn increases and reputation risks damage through negative word of mouth marketing. In fact, in our recent customer experience survey we found that one in three consumers would ditch a company for good after just one below-par experience.

How do I increase customer satisfaction?

Understanding what your existing customers want and delivering it to them effectively is the best way to satisfy; meaning you can secure repeat orders, keep and retain your customers and benefit from positive word of mouth. Ways of doing this might include;

Customer loyalty schemes

You can immediately make a customer feel special and valued with a reward or loyalty scheme that offers them perks throughout the year…and they might even tell their colleagues and friends about it too! For example, we gave our lucky SageCover customers their very own VIP area at our recent SageWorld event.  Nice armchairs, trendy bags and tasty cakes all round!

Analysing customer data

Use the data you are gain everyday to find out a little more about your customers – like their propensity to buy at certain times of year or previous products they have bought – anything that might indicate their purchase preferences and behaviours. Then tailor your marketing to fit with the profile you have built up of them – something personalised or highly topical to them is much more likely to get through. Getting the right CRM software, or Customer Relationship Management software, can help with this.

Encouraging customer feedback

Giving your customers a chance to engage in two-way dialogue with you is vital. This could be through feedback surveys, social media, review meetings etc. It shows that you are more than just a business; it shows you have empathy and that you want to develop a relationship with customers – no bad thing! Here at Sage we try to do as much as possible.  We’d love you to hear from you through our Sage UK Twitter feed, our Facebook page or even by commenting on this blog.

Effective complaints management

Customer complaints can be telling, so it’s essential to deal with them efficiently, fairly and ensure the customer receives a satisfactory response and follow up. If a complaint is handled effectively, it can give you important root cause information that may help you to predict future issues or trends.

Improved customer service

Customer service needs to be sincere for it to be effective, so it’s vital to ensure that your staff are trained to fulfil this. If your staff can consistently treat all customers with respect and show efficiency, you will gain customer satisfaction and are sure to retain their business in the long-term.

Iain Ramsay, Small Business Team

In these tough economic times customer retention takes on increased importance. So how can you keep your customers happy? Some of our customers share their top tips.

In the spirit of Valentines Day we asked our colleagues to share their top tips for showing customers that they care.

What do you think? Is there something else that your business is doing that you’d like to share or something you love (or hate) as a consumer of service?

Stephen Douglas – Customer Services coach

To show the customer you care, remember your customers’ names.
Whenever you have contact with your customers — whether it’s in person, or by phone, fax, or e-mail — always use their names. When you do so, the business experience becomes personal. And when the business experience becomes personal, your customers become vested in the relationship and thereby become your friend. When you use the customers’ names, they become as concerned about your success as you are. Taken from Business Week.

Laura Bowie – Sage 50 Accounts Technical Support

Treat each customer the way you would want to be treated. Let them know what is going on and reassure them if needed. Each customer is as important as the next so make them feel that way.

Joanne Johnston – Marketing executive

Its about listening but also about keeping the up the communication (whether its good news or bad!)

Sarah Dearden

Take ownership

Seems like a simple thing yet it is something that upsets customers the most. There is nothing more upsetting for customers than when someone doesn’t follow through with their actions .

Keith Office – Senior developer

My rule was, and still is, never promise anything that you can’t reasonably expect to deliver. Confidence/Trust takes time to build up but can take seconds to destroy.

Ronald Langston – Test Technician

Don’t tell the customer what you cannot do, instead offer them solutions, or alternatives. Have a true “Can Do” attitude when dealing with every customer

Jamie Harris – Customer Services Advisor

A slight change to the old classic. ‘A customer is like a box of chocolates: You never know what you’re gonna get.’ Stay flexible, tailor yourself, and your solution to the customers needs.

Mandy Filson – Brand Manager

My response echoes much of what’s been posted already – as a customer it’s about feeling listened to, being treated as an individual and being made to feel special. But for me it’s also about feeling that the person delivering the service/experience is happy in what they’re doing and feels empowered to bring some of their own personality into their role.

For example, I recently called a well-known appliance manufacturer because my dishwasher had broken down. I explained the problem to the very nice man on the other end of the phone and confess I was a bit fed up at the thought of having no dishwasher for a few days. He took all the details, gave me an idea of what the problem might be, apologised that he couldn’t send an engneer until the following week and then without hesitation suggested that I nipped out and bought a few pairs of Marigolds as it looked like I’d be doing quite a bit of washing up over the weekend!

With that one line he made me laugh, diffused any frustration I may have felt about the delay in the engineer visiting and left me with a very positive feeling about the individual and the company. However, I still hate washing up!

Lisa Graveling – UK PR Manager

Good service involves anticipating your customers’ needs before they even know what they want.

Paul Waters  - Programme Manager

I agree with Lisa – it’s about listening to your customers and then making sure you actually understand what it is that they are saying. It’s about understanding customer pain points and delivering solutions to address these.

In my role at Sage as a Technical Support Advisor I talk with customers on a daily basis; if you’ve got SageCover and have ever called for support maybe I’ve even taken your call!  Whether I’m talking to the MD of a large company or to a sole trader they all have one thing in common, they are all people. 

Andrew Redhead, Technical Support Advisor

I find the one to one communication of my phone based role to be the most satisfying thing as it allows me to really get to know the customer.  I have over the years really enjoyed the way calls have naturally flowed while working through calls.  If there is a section of the call that allows it I often have a conversation around how their business is doing, the challenges they face and what their interests.  I have heard about the good and bad parts of their life, we have laughed but thankfully never cried. 

The feeling of working through a problem with a customer to find out what has happened, and then giving a solution that the customer is happy with really makes me feel valued.  I also have the power to change someone’s day for the better. 

If a customer has been trying to solve a problem for hours before they ring us taking the time to get them back on track and make sure they know where they went wrong can save them from hours more problems that can be avoided.  

The thing that makes talking with customers interesting though is they are all different.  They have to be treated differently and have different needs.  You can never assume that you can answer the same question twice in the same way and get the same outcome.  This means no two calls are the same and there is always a new challenge just around the corner.

Written by Andrew Redhead, Technical Support Advisor

So, what’s this all got to do with the customer-relationship software you use and your business’ customer strategy ? 

Let’s start with the software first.  You are likely to be using customer-relationship software  to help your lead prospecting activities.  Capturing names & interests is at the very heart of of customer-relationship software.  Yet, those same prospect records can be greatly enriched through the information available on through Social Media outlets.  Information such as:

• What topics are important to them?
• Who else are they talking to?
• What are they saying experiences (products & more) ?

You can use information from these sites to help enrich a prospect’s record as part of building your  customer relations program.  That’s converting time spent on social media sites into revenue for your business.  Information from these sites can be fed directly into CRM – be that ACT!, Sage CRM or SalesLogix, informing & improving your direct marketing activities.

Relating Social media to your customer strategy – listening for & managing the content.

Your investment in CRM is key to your customer retention strategy.  Ensuring you stay relevant in to customers, both before and after a sale.  But without social media interaction, you can only “know” about the conversations you have directly with them.  What happens when they talk about you in other forums – blogs, forums, social networking sites, etc ?

 Investing time in social media outlets provides you with an opportunity to ‘listen in’ to the conversations being discussed (check out our free guide Connecting with your customers; a guide to social media to help you get started). You can develop an understanding of your customers and benefit from insights within their communities.  Further, with businesses getting more than half of their customers through word of mouth, staying tuned in & monitoring the flow of conversation will give insights to other prospects & encourage the flow across these informal networks.

 Listening in also gives you a chance to improve customer relations when things go wrong for a customer.  By tuning in to relevant conversations, you can dramatically improve your chances of finding unhappy customers quickly and addressing their issues before they do serious damage to your brand.  

 An investment in CRM software is only partially realised without a matching customer strategy.  Harnessing Social Media is an essential part of your business’ customer strategy & key to keeping customers.