“The customer is always right.” For a long time, this slogan was the shorthand for good customer relations. And many businesses put it at the center of their strategy for growing a loyal base of happy, repeat customers. But is there more to building quality customer relationships than just catering to their needs, wants, and desires?
We’ll tackle the answer to this question and more in this 3-part series on why quality customer relationships matter. To get started, let’s go over the basics of the customer relationship: what goes into it, why it matters, and how any business can improve their approach to making, and keeping, customers happy.
What are quality customer relationships?
While offering a top-notch product or service may be enough to inspire an initial purchase, quality alone is not what keeps a customer buying from a brand for life. Brand loyalty is, and it’s at the core of quality customer relationships.
Ultimately, what brand loyalty comes down to is connection. When people feel emotionally connected to a brand, they return to it again and again. Even if competitors charge less and offer more, because it’s no longer about the price or even the product. It’s about the experience of feeling understood and valued. That’s why more than half of customers say they stay loyal to brands that “get them.”
Why quality customer relationships can make or break a business
A continual focus on building quality customer relationships is key because brand loyalty doesn’t develop overnight. Consistently providing those “surprise and delight” experiences takes time. It’s well worth the investment in cultivating these quality relationships. These relationships pay off, particularly in terms of a customer’s lifetime value to a business.
For proof, just look at some of the statistics around repeat business:
- Over 80% of companies agree that retaining existing customers is cheaper than acquiring new ones.
- Up to 65% of a company’s business is generated from existing customers.
- Increasing customer retention by just 5% raises profits by 25% to 95%.
The key to building quality customer relationships
Given how essential customer loyalty is, it’s important for every business owner to understand how to nurture it. One of the most effective ways is training staff. Cultivating loyalty is a team effort, and every employee plays a role in building the brand and creating the customer experience. Every employee needs to understand and embrace the importance of cultivating quality customer relationships. It takes one time for a customer to get upset enough to question whether the company no longer cares. A second negative experience can lead to a lost customer.
A good training program should cover the high-level stuff, like brand mission, vision, and values, and the nitty gritty, like how to handle customer complaints. The training should be engaging and offer the participants a chance to own their learning experience and question the why’s and how’s. A virtual learning solution like Jigsaw Interactive offers companies the ability to easily build programs that don’t turn people into Zoom Zombies. Schedule a demo to see how it works.
