It’s Not About You: Five Ways to Surprise and Delight Your Retail Customers
You always want to be in conversation with your customers—that much is obvious. However, as the people who are responsible for your sales and the health of your company, one thing to understand before everything else is that the conversation is really all about them. Crafting meaningful customer experiences is essential for growing your business, and the only way to do that is to talk to current and prospective buyers in a way that they’ll hear what you have to say. Here are five ways to do that in every interaction with your audience.
- Meet them where they are
Whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook, industry message boards, at live events—wherever—meet your customers where they spend their time. Your customers won’t always just come to you, so you have to find them. Then make it as easy as possible for them to get acquainted with your brand. If you take the time to learn the nuances of the interactions on social media or message boards, you’ll earn the trust of those potential customers even faster. - Give them something they can’t get anywhere else
This is what we mean when we talk about “meaningful experiences.” Make it relevant, make it specific, and make it exclusive. The content may not appeal to everyone, but it will make loyal advocates out of the people who connect with it. You want to make sure you stand out from competitors, and one of the best ways to do that is to give your audience insights they can’t get anywhere else. Want to take that meaningful experience a step further? Make it personal! Show your customer that you know them. - Don’t be a robot
It turns out that there are still jobs machines can’t replace. For customers, human interactions with a brand go a long way toward building trust, creating a relationship, and maintaining a long-term connection. This means injecting levity into your brand’s social feeds, using customers’ names in emails, adding small personal touches to every interaction. Be authentic and be intentional and well… just be human! All of this will help keep your company trustworthy and your products memorable. - Appeal to emotions
Nothing is more powerful than an emotional bond, and if you don’t think customers have emotional ties to the products and services they choose, think again. Having a choice and exercising it is a powerful cognitive motivator. When customers choose your product, they have certain beliefs about what it is going to do for them and the brand promise you’re offering. So use your own product or service as if you were a customer. Be empathetic to any struggles they might have with it and don’t try to put a bandage on the problem—instead try sincerely and resolutely to address their issues. - Deliver on a promise
If you aren’t making a promise to potential customers, they don’t have any reason to be interested in your product. If you make a promise that you don’t keep, your customers don’t have any reason to trust you. So make a clear promise to your prospects—that your product or service will help them in their daily life or make some task quicker or easier. Make sure they know what the promise is and that they connect with it, then make sure that you come through for them.
Customers will connect with you if you treat them the way you’d expect to be treated, so continue to surprise and delight them with positive interactions. Learn more about how you can better serve your customers and address their individual needs with Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
