Effective Customer Management and Communication Strategies
Understanding Your Customers
The customer is the intended target of a business, and all company efforts are geared toward fulfilling the customer’s needs for a product or service.
Key Customer Roles
Within the buying process, individuals can take on several roles:
- The Decision-Maker: This person has the final say on the purchase of the product or service.
- The Inquirer: This person is in charge of the preliminary steps before a purchase, such as researching the product, comparing prices, and finding special offers.
- The Expert: This person advises on which product or service to buy.
- The User: This person will ultimately receive and use the product or service.
Client Types by Personality, Relationship, and Profitability
Staff who interact with clients need to adapt their behavior according to the client’s profile.
- By Personality: Clients can be good-natured, speculative, determined, arrogant, hesitant, or contentious.
- By Relationship with the Company: Clients can be loyal, loyal but on a budget, low-budget, practical, or wandering.
- By Profitability: Highly profitable clients not only have significant purchasing power but are also loyal to your product or service.
Dealing with Clients Based on Personality and Profitability
When interacting with a client, it’s essential to apply effective social skills and strategic approaches to manage the relationship successfully.
The Company-Client Relationship: Three Key Perspectives
Customer Care and Customer Service
Customer care is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction.
Customer Care Solutions
- Advice: Guide the customer to purchase the product that best suits their needs.
- Upkeep: The company offers services for the correct maintenance of a product.
- Risk Minimization: The company offers the client the option to return a product for a refund.
- Product Access: The company ensures that clients can access the product easily.
- Easy Payment: The company provides credit lines that favor installment payments.
- Customer Support: The company identifies customer needs and measures satisfaction.
Customer Support
Customer support is often more personal than general customer care, focusing on specific issues while ensuring the company provides satisfactory product maintenance.
Guidelines for Quality Customer Support
- Quality: Ensure communication with the client is first-rate.
- Accessibility: Communication with the client should be available through different channels.
- Professionalism: Staff responsible for client communication must have specific training and predefined operational objectives.
- Diligence: The client must perceive the service as quick and efficient.
- Courtesy: Treat the client in a polite and respectful manner.
- Environment: The support environment should be friendly to make the client feel at ease.
Customer Loyalty and Allegiance
Customer loyalty is a sense of fidelity a client feels towards a service provider or product supplier, leading to a long-term relationship. To promote it, companies must implement specific tasks and functions to obtain and increase customer allegiance.
Three Factors That Promote Customer Loyalty
- Client Satisfaction: Clients feel a mutual bond and a two-way relationship with the provider or supplier.
- Exit Barriers: These are obstacles that make it difficult for a customer to switch to a competitor.
- Competitors: A company must adjust its loyalty programs in response to the competition.
- Advantages: A loyal relationship is mutually beneficial for both the company and the customer.
Functions and Organization of Customer Support
Customer support begins when a client or customer shows an intention to purchase a product or service.
Core Functions of Customer Support
- Management of claims and complaints.
- Acquisition and management of customer information.
- Client services, such as clarifying questions about the correct use of a product.
- Research and analysis to detect malfunctions, improve the service, and identify competitors’ strategies.
- After-sales support, including technical support, order tracking, and product upkeep.
Client Communication and Key Terminology
The Communication Process
Effective communication involves several key elements:
- Message
- Code
- Sender
- Receiver
- Channel
- Context
- Feedback
Communication Tools
- Impersonal Advertising: The message is not directed to a specific client.
- Personal Direct Marketing: The intended receiver is a specific client. It’s an interactive process where the business seeks feedback, aiming to increase sales and customer allegiance.
Essential Definitions and Vocabulary
Key Roles and Concepts
- Customer: A person who buys a product but is not necessarily a regular patron.
- Client: A person who regularly buys a product or service from a business.
- Consumer: A person who uses a product, regardless of whether they paid for it.
- Shop assistant (noun): A person who serves customers in a shop.
- Help desk (noun): A service providing information and assistance to help clients solve technical problems.
- Board of directors (noun): The governing committee of a company.
- Habit (noun): A regular tendency or practice.
- Expectation (noun): A strong belief that something will happen.
Common Business Synonyms
- Staff: Personnel in charge
- Modus operandi: Method
- To connect: To put together
- Survey: View
- Duty: Loyalty
- Primarily: First
- Tactic: Strategy
- Obtaining: Use
- Diverse: Varied
- To aim for: To arrive at
- Explanation: Information
- To improve: To make better
- Anomaly: Oddity
- Origin: Source