“It’s nothing personal.” Bullspit! There’s no such thing as nothing being personal in the business world. No matter who’s involved in a business equation, people are either spending money they worked hard to earn, or are looking to earn the other person’s money through hard work. Unless you’ve won the lottery, any blood, sweat and tears poured into your business makes the scenario very personal.
If you’re running your business like a robot, void of emotion and looking at your clients like binary code, then they’ll eventually start tearing you apart like HAL 9000. You will get significantly more mileage out of your bootstrapped budget if you treat your customers like people. What’s the best way to do this? You’ve got to build relationships.
Especially in a world that’s virtually all virtual, prospects and clients want to know there’s a real person caring for them and their business. A prime example of this is the latest Allstate tagline stating that “You’re In Good Hands with Allstate.” Make your clients feel like they are individuals and that you will always be there for them and you will build immense loyalty. As you can imagine, customer loyalty bolsters your budget for several reasons.
For one thing, it’s always significantly more lucrative to retain clients than it is to shop out new ones. Even if you decide to raise your rates down the road, loyal customers will be willing to pay more because you’ve built up value with them. Your ideal clients should not take on the air of an accountant, constantly counting pennies, but should be looking beyond your fees and focusing on the positive results you’re producing for their business. If you’ve taken the care and time to build a solid relationship with your clients, then they’ll gladly pay more for the peace of mind they get from knowing you’re treating their business as if it were your own.
Transcending the business barrier and achieving a personal level to the business you do creates a third dimension. Any additional element you can add to your client relations serves to fortify your situation as a whole. Here we can apply the apples-to-apples scenario: You should always be thinking of how you can distinguish your apple from all the other apples out there. Especially in tough economic times, when businesses are having as much luck trying to stretch their budgets as they would using a timing belt as a rubber band, you need to illustrate as many value points as possible. If all other elements are equal in comparison, a client will remain loyal to you if you’ve established and maintained a personal rapport.
In addition, when you take the time to build a personal relationship with your clients, then you naturally garner a better understanding of what they want and what their business needs for the greatest success. A little extra TLC will then actually help save you time and money, as you’ll be able to handle their account more efficiently. And not that we’re encourage sloppy business, but a personal relationship will also help foster some added forgiveness for the occasional error!
Another huge positive for you bootstrappers is the fact that when you maintain a personable level with your clients, then they are significantly more likely to refer your business to others, increasing your word-of-mouth business, which is…uh huh, go ahead and let it roll of your tongue…free!
Everyone wants to be the “best company on line” and boast about their “100% customer satisfaction” but a very small amount can deliver on this statement. I myself have even fallen into the ‘bad business’ when it comes to customer service before but I have realized that customer service is key in growing your business past just the normal sized business it is now, into the “SUPER BUSINESS” you want it to be and know it can be.
You can have the most kick-ass company in the world, but without the right customer service, you will instantly gain a bad reputation for handling your customers and you will ultimately LOSE business deals that could have been worth millions. You will also lose out on joint ventures with other company’s who could compliment your business-model because they do not want to align themselves with a company with your bad reputation (because face it, with bad customer service you have a bad reputation).
I have come across some key ideas on how to keep your customer service high and bad business referrals low. Most of the things I am going to say should go without mention, but I know a lot of people struggle with these things as I did a year or so ago.
There are many ways to hold your customers in high regard without breaking your back to do it. The main thing that comes to my mind when working with clients is offering them a referral bonus for a certain amount of friends they refer to your business. This gives them a sense of importance and at the same time allows you to focus on other aspects of business besides searching for clients. With a design company, you could offer them a free design after X amount of referrals, or a 10% profit of all referrals they send. Giving them the option to choose which they would like is also a great way to have them ‘believe’ they are in control.
Another great concept for customer service is to do the following: Under commit and over achieve. The concept it simple when you think about it; Give them a week deadline and finish in 5 days. Always over-bid your time when working with clients. Do not feel as though you need to tell them “12 hours and I will have a 30 page website complete with flash! YAH!” That is a dumb move and I have done that numerous times in the past and it never works out. You want your customers to move on with their business after you have worked with them thinking that you did everything BETTER than expected, not WORSE than promised.
Giving your customers a form of contact with you via AIM, EMAIL, PHONE and so on is good but do not stick your neck out and tell them you are “always around” and “will help out whenever” and so on. This goes similar to the last paragraph because you again do not want to over-commit to something you can not keep your word on. Doing this (over-committing) will just hurt you and the things people say about you in the end. Tell them you will give them 8 hours a day while working on their project to be “on call” but never “whenever you need” because as I learned, you will have people IM you at 3am asking to change some simple text. This brings me to my next point as well.
Make sure you do not give your clients the feeling that you give an “unlimited amount of changes” when working on their project. Let them know that “within reason, you will help them to change things” or a “24 hour after completion policy” but never an “unlimited” statement. Doing this will cause a LOT of confusion 2 weeks after a job is done and you are working on a new project when you have Susy emailing you because she removed a paragraph and needs you to help get it back. Or, Jimmy is getting a project done and asks for 200 variations to designs because he doesn’t “like it in that area” and wants you to move a box 10 pixels down.
The things I have mentioned are mainly from an on line business stand-point similar to design companies, hosting companies, copy write companies and so on but can be applied to any business. You want your customers to always feel like a part of the team and that everything you promised you completed. This will bring in so many referrals you may never have to look for work again. Trust me, customer service IS KEY!