So much of having a successful business isn’t even about your products or services in and of themselves—it’s about the relationship and rapport you’re able to build around your business and with your customers. If your customers don’t feel like they like or can trust your business, they’re unlikely to do business with you regardless of how much better you may be than your competition. So to help keep your business in your customer’s good graces, here are three ways you can begin to build a better rapport with your customers starting today.
Understand Rapport-Building Behaviors
In order to build a good rapport with your customers, you have to first understand what specific things you can do within your communication that will begin to naturally build that rapport. According to SkillsYouNeed, businesses can build rapport with customers by using the customer’s name early on in your communication, showing empathy, being agreeable and complementary and much more. These behaviors can help lead you to a deal or sale with your customer.It’s important to keep in mind that your rapport-building behaviors shouldn’t cease just as soon as you’ve made your sale. To truly build strong and loyal relationships with your customers, you’ve got to extend this relationship beyond just your business transaction. Once you’ve made the sale, be sure you continue seeking out ways to build even further on this rapport, like following up with the customer or reaching back out to them in some way.
Improve Your Customer Service
Customer service is one of the main ways businesses communicate with their customers, necessitating those responsible for good customer service to do all they can to help build a solid rapport with customers. According to Chris Wolski, a contributor to Chron Small Business, businesses can build rapport using customer service representatives to break the ice, actively listen and respond, mirror the customer, and be genuine in all communications.Because these principles in relationships and rapport aren’t necessarily natural for many people, it’s crucial that you explain to your employees or those responsible for customer service that you’re focusing on building real and meaningful relationships with your customers. Once this idea is understood, many aspect of building rapport should naturally fall into place. By following these steps, you will definitely see your customer service improve as well as a more solid rapport built with your business and its customers.
Use Social Media Effectively
In today’s business world, social media can play a huge role in the way your company and brand are perceived. In fact, in an infographic shared by KISSmetrics, it’s stated that 26 percent of customers will post their complaints or negative experiences on a business’s social channels, necessitating a business to know how to combat this behavior. For this reason, it’s vital that you use social media effectively to create a rapport with your target market.To do this, Bridget Gleason, a contributor to Entrepreneur, suggests for businesses to use their social platforms and followings to get to know their followers to the best of their ability and help your followers get to know and trust you as a business as well. This is a great use of your social media marketing time and budget, especially if you haven’t handled previous online customer complaints as well as you could have.
Creating a rapport with your customers will help to make the customer relationship aspect of your business a lot healthier. Use the tips mentioned above to begin improving your business’s rapport with it’s target audience today.
Featured image via: shutterstock.
