As an office supply professional, your business depends on maintaining positive relationships with your clients and ensuring that your service outperforms your competition. For your business, making clients happy and guaranteeing repeat business is as important as the bottom line. If you’re having trouble making sure you hold on to those clients, we’re here to help. Read on for five tips to maintain loyalty without breaking the bank.
1. Feedback Surveys
Services such as Survey Monkey allow you to create and send out custom surveys. You can use this function to contact your clients and give them the opportunity to take a survey and leave feedback. Be sure to structure the questions in an unbiased fashion and ask for genuine feedback on your performance, product quality, customer service, expertise, and anything else that could impact your client relationships. Be sure to take note of all feedback, and use this to change how you conduct business. After all, the customer is always right, and this feedback will show that you are always looking to improve and make your clients happy.
2. Be Responsive
Proper communication is essential to your relationship with your clients, and being able to address their concerns quickly and efficiently will help to ensure they stick with you. If you have dedicated client service representatives, be sure to have them provide contact information and online hours to your clientele. You can even specify the best ways to communicate (e.g., email, phone) and specify how soon a response can be expected. This will put clients at ease, letting them know that they can be in touch as needed to have issues properly addressed.
3. Make it Personal
Get to know your clients, not just as business partners but as people. Learning about them on a personal level can aid your business relationship, as it will help you to connect to them and show you care. This will work in your favor, as it shows you are dedicated to working with them, meeting their needs, and retaining their business. While it is important to separate your work from your personal life, you should feel comfortable building this connection. For your most important clients, provide your cell phone number (for your work cell, preferably) so that they can reach you immediately if something comes up. This will once again show how important this client is to you, and increase the loyalty of your client and the strength of your professional relationship.
4. Be Careful Not to Oversell
While it’s great to give your all to satisfying your clients, overselling your services will ultimately lead to dissatisfied customers and, possibly, internal disappointment. Carefully consider your marketing, communication, and customer service strategies, and be sure to keep your promised performance reasonable but professional. Don’t sell yourself short, but be sure you are capable of backing your claims. This will inspire confidence in your clients, and they will remember that when they need more business.
5. Don’t Forget the Pleasant Surprises !
An unexpected mishap with a client can spell disaster, but an unexpected gift can make you stick out to your clients and improve the positive relationship you hold with them. A quick gift or card can show that you truly value your client’s business, and will keep you top-of-mind when they’re deciding who they should work with for their supply needs. Remember, meeting expectations is good, but exceeding expectations when building a rapport with clients will put you above the competition.
These tips aren’t the only ways to help retain your clients, but they’re a good start. Be sure to give your clients the best service you can, and be sure to show them you care about their business as much as you care about your own. Be sure you’re supplying them with quality paper like Double A. Request a sample today and see the Double A difference!