Hey, welcome back to the Six Figure Mastermind. Super glad you're here. Yeah
maybe you're in business for yourself you're trying to build that six-figure
business and you find that you keep having to look for new customers and
you're trying to do more marketing and you're trying to do all that. Well
there's five specific tips I have for you today that's going to ease a lot of
that for you because we're going to retain the customers we already have. Stay tuned.
Okay, so I had a viewer of our channel come and asked me the question when do
we really need to start thinking or worrying about customer satisfaction and
how do we satisfy our customers. So you know here's my perspective on that. As
soon as you have a business or as soon as you're thinking about having a
business, you've got to start your customer relations you got to start
managing those customer expectations and developing a good relationship for your
customers because most likely, even if you're just starting out, your first
customers will have known you before you start your business right? So, your first
customers could be friends, they could be family, of course you're going to get
organic reach and strangers coming in and that's essentially what you want, but
when a customer comes to you, they're not really buying your product. Even if
they're walking out the door with your product in their hand. They're not buying
the product exclusively. They're buying the experience. They're buying a piece of
you. They're buying who you are. So the time to start developing those
relationships is now. If you haven't already started. So I'm going to talk to
you about today - five huge tips in really creating those customer relationships
and satisfying those customers. Okay, here's tip number one. Answer emails,
comments, tags, posts, whatever social media platform they are using. Whether
you're using your email, whether are you using whatever. They can hand write
letters to you if they want to. Probably won't happen very often but it could.
Biggest thing is answer them. Even if it's just like a thank you or a shout
out or maybe it's a negative comment or a piece of feedback that you got. You've
got to respond to those and especially if it's negative sometimes. You've got to
be a person that communicates with your...and that's just basic relationship
building 101 right? Open communication. So when people reach out and talk about
your business or are talking to you about your business, make sure you're
responding to all of the emails in a timely manner. I mean people don't like
to sit on emails for very long especially if they're antsy about
something that's going on. You know with their product or service. So answer
emails and my rule for emails is within 24 hours. I like to answer my
emails with my clients within 24 hours. Okay, my text, my answer for
that is you've got to respond to texts within one to five hours Even if let's
say you're really busy and you're doing a conference, you could just send a
response back and say, "hey I got your text. I wanted you to know I can call you
at such-and-such a time or whenever you put it on your calendar." Then please put
it on your calendar. So you remember to call them okay?
And be prompt. Don't be late on the phone call. Don't be behind the phone call. Just
be there, be on time so your customer can expect that with you for the duration of
your relationship together. Okay, so that's tip number one - respond to all
texts, all emails, all comments, everything on social media. Everything in person.
Give them a response as soon as you possibly can. Tip number two - be the first
mover. Especially when it comes to communication. When your company does
something new or different, maybe there's been a change or an update, you've got to
be the one to reach out and deliver that information. So your customers not
finding it out later or second hand. Be active in communicating with your
customers. Send newsletters outs and emails and even send text messages
out. Cheer customers. Let them know that you are willing to be the one that goes
first. Be the one that reaches out delivering them any alerts, any changes,
any announcements. You should be the one making those happen and initiate in that
conversation rather than having it be kind of this reactive thing. Customers
don't like that. It's no bueno okay? So that's tip number two. Tip number three -
be transparent. Be open. Disclose what you're doing. You know and this is going to
cover your behind sometimes too. When it comes down to you know maybe there's
someone that wants to lawsuit. I mean heaven forbid but that could happen if
you're running a business. If you're transparent and you document it in
writing, the whole way, the whole time. One, you're going to avoid most of those
really sticky situations in the first place and two, should those situations
come up, you'll have backup because you're the one, "I said I documented
everything, I send all the information. I was very transparent
with the customer, knew exactly what to expect on their end. We knew what to
expect from the customer on our end and when you're being transparent, it's not
just with your your client to professional relations. I'm talking about
business practices too okay? So if you say that your company for example may be
donating 10% of all proceeds to your favorite charity. Maybe it'd be a good
idea to disclose in some kind of a newsletter. How that happened and if
that got delivered and when that happened and all the good that you did
from it. If you've got a customer that you know is getting emails from you and
you are talking about a specific formula for something that they're purchasing
from you. Either a cosmetic or inedible, you've got to disclose the formula.
You've got to disclose what the benefits are. You just... be transparent. Let the
customer know. Keep no secrets. Of course there are things in the corporate
world that you don't necessarily have to disclose as far as you know how much you
pay your employees for example. That's obviously not going ti be public knowledge
doesn't need to be. But as far as your business practices go,
let everyone see what's behind the curtain. Number four - man up. Take
ownership. If something goes wrong, this is why people say the customer's always
right because guys frankly, they are. And here's why. Because when the customer
has some kind of experience with you, they're going to develop their opinion
of you and when someone's opinion is what they believe, then their opinion is
right according to them. And when you're dealing with customers, that's really
what matters. Even if they're got the facts wrong, even if they had something
that was totally off-base from what you delivered in your newsletter, your job is
to take accountability. Take accountability for what your part was.
Again this is why you're documenting everything but you're also saying, "okay, I
see that this is a problem that comes up. I acknowledge that. I see that
this is a problem for you. What can we do to help? I see that in our history that
practice hasn't worked for you." Maybe you run a retail establishment right? And you
have a 90 day return policy and someone came returning a brand new item that
open unused on the 91st day. Alright customer service says, take care of the
customer. The policy says 90 days, what am I going to do? If it's a return that I
can process, that's inventory I can take back. You know it follows the
overhead of your company and you can do that responsibly. I'll take care of the
customer because a customer the customers experience is the most
important thing. Absolutely. Tip number five - gratitude. Go the extra mile. Tell
your customers. I'm not just saying thank you on the bottom of a receipt. I
mean anyone can do that. Most of them get ignored. I'm talking about guys, maybe
it's time to make a handwritten letter. Maybe if you've got a really loyal
customer who keeps coming back to you, send him a little bit of extra in the
mail. You send them the extra product or maybe an extra a gift card or a bonus.
Just as a thank you for being their loyal customer. Maybe you've seen...
I really hope you've seen that Chewbacca lady on YouTube. Oh my gosh one of my
favorite videos to watch on YouTube and you better watch it over and over again with
my kids. But here's the thing. There's another video that goes hand-in-hand
with that. There's Chewbacca lady, she names Cole's right? The department store
in her video. She said, "I just finished shopping at Kohl's. I'm here in my car.
I've got this Chewbacca masks. Having so much fun with this thing." You know what
Kohl's did for her? She was a customer to them and she just dropped their name in
the video, didn't know would go viral is my assumption. Kohl's sent her boxes upon
boxes upon boxes of thank you gifts of Star Wars.
You know toys and then posters and apparel and all of these extra things
because Kohl's wanted to show her, "hey you know what
you'd probably didn't plan on that video going viral, it's cool that you shop with
us and we just want to say thank you for all of the good things that
you've done for us and that video is done for us. We appreciate you." Go the
extra mile. You know that's never wasted. Gratitude is never ever wasted.
especially when you have a customer that's got a beef with you. Express
gratitude to them.Express gratitude to them for them speaking up because
only statistically, only 4% of people that have a problem with your company
are willing to say something and that feedback is super valuable to you. If
you've got a large number of people that to satisfy to something and someone
finally lets you know about it, it's like when you have spinach in your
teeth and you think the person that finally told you it was there, right? Be
grateful for your customers especially the ones that are helping you out with
some feedback and end your conversations with gratitude and all your transactions
with gratitude. So if you follow those five tips, get to a really cool
one-on-one your with your relationship with your customers where they're loyal
to you and your brand. So I hope you enjoyed that video. Let me know if you
have any more questions about anything business-related. I want to see in the
comments and I want to make a video specifically for you and answer your
questions. Everybody hit the subscribe button and give us a ring on the bell.
Get some notifications from us and I'll see you tomorrow.