It’s almost February 14th.
Valentine’s Day is, to put it nicely, a fairly divisive holiday. Most people either spend the day wishing the whole thing would just go away, or spend it in a pink cloud of relationship bliss.
The first time I did Customer Love, it was definitely the pink cloud experience. I met tons of new people I’d never talked to before, and picked up lots of new blogs to read. I networked! This was huge, because I’m very shy and normally the idea of networking makes me hide under the covers. I had a giveaway, and had lots of fun with it.
I felt great all the way up until the end of the month, when I realized I’d had fun because I spent a whole month thinking about me. I’d given away stuff I would have wanted to get, and I’d talked about things I wanted to talk about. Yeah, it’d been fun for me, but was it really relationship building?
Here’s that nagging issue when it comes to building actual relationships, both personally and professionally: you have to get up and work on it every day. You have to take out the trash and do the dishes and remember to put on your nice underwear every now and then.
When you run a business, you have to give your customers that same effort. You have to respond to email cheerfully, remember details about people, and spend lots of time generally thinking about what other people want.
In short, loving your customers can be hard. Doing it on a daily basis can feel nearly impossible.
Here are some quick tips to help you love your customers more – no grand romantic gestures required.
Make things personal
Ask your customers questions that show you care. This can be as easy as surveying what they want from you, or just mentioning some small detail of their lives that you picked up on. One of my favorite clients is a woman who works from home with her two-year-old son. She’s talented, she works hard, and her kid is adorable. Now, whenever we have a phone meeting, I ask her about her son and she’s thrilled. I like hearing about him and she likes talking about him.
Ask how you can help
Obviously, you can’t solve every problem your customer has (and if they try and make you do that, they aren’t a good customer!) However, there are lots of things you can do that will help people out immensely. Do you have contacts that they can use? Do they need a web designer (and can you point them towards one?) It may feel like a small gesture to you, but it can mean the world to your customer.
Be a real person
This is the piece of advice on this list that is hardest to follow. If you get a nice email, respond to it. If someone gives you a compliment, say thank you. If you screw up, admit it and apologize. As entrepreneurs, we’ve got tons of pressure to be perfect all the time, but that isn’t always what our customers want. There’s nothing more frustrating than interacting with yet another online robot, so don’t be one.
What simple things are you doing on a daily basis to love your customer? Tell me in the comments below!
