Conversations You Should Be Having With Customers
Most startups and businesses fails due to the missing communication with the customers. If we want to grow more we need to keep the active communication with the customer. We need to go with time to time feedback with the existing and new customers. This will not only create the strong bond with the customer but also keep the communication channel open. For the modern management, communication is the key to the success. Following eight type of conversions are needed for the long term business relationship with the customers.
1. When to start the conversion and how to converse
The conversion should start from the day one even if he/she is just a prospect. Always go the extra mile to serve the prospect. Many times prospects come to us and if it is not possible to serve them due to the any of the reason you can provide them with the alternative to solve their purpose.
For example, if the customer comes to you and asks for the help to develop a website and you are not able to handle the request due to unavailability of resources, you can provide a suggestion with any other company who can work for them. This will not only give the better impression but also keeps the communication channel open for the future.
2. How was on-boarding handled?
Once the customer is on-board, make sure to take feedback from customer time to time. This will give the better impression about your seriousness in the business as well as you will come to know about the progress of the project.
I saw many of the startups are failing at this point, once the project is on-board the communication is always between the development teams and the project manager but the project owners are out of the loop and this creates many confusions over the period of time.
3. Understand their native language and culture
In the multicultural environment and especially in the field of Information Technology we saw that customers are coming from the different countries.
We need to understand the customer well with their culture to serve them well.
For example, some cultures you can not smile at the other person, if your customer is from the same culture you need to make sure to follow their rules while communicating.
4. Ask customers the “Why”
Ask your customers “Why” when they chose you as the service provider. This will help you to understand the customer requirements upfront. “Why” is the most important question for the communication and future relationship.
5. Wants and needs
Understand the customer needs by asking them about their “Wants” and comparing it with your understanding with “Customer Want”. Time to time ask the customer about their needs, for example, if they want to do any modification in the team? if they want to change any process? If the current process meets their requirement. Asking these questions and applying impactful solution will help you build more trust with your customer.
6. Why they’ve gone
If any customer is leaving you, do the retrospective analysis to understand why the customer left you. You can also ask the customer for reason, you may or may not get the exact answers but you will surely get the high-level details about their leaving.
Once you get some or all the details, apply the changes to the process and it will help you keep the current customers happy.
It is said that if your one of the customer is facing some issues in the process and speak up, that does not mean that other customers are not facing the same issue, they did not speak because they found the workaround for the issue.
7. Get them involved
If you are building a new product and you feel that it can be useful to any of your existing customer, involve them in the development process. This will help you build the better product as well as you will earn the customer trust.
Customer involvement keeps the two-way communication channel open.
8. Content sharing
Share your contents on to the customers time to time. This will help them to get notified of the services and products offered by you.
Written by Ankit Mehta. Edited by The Revoluzionne Team.
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