It’s rather astonishing. Many firms are neglecting a very simple yet crucial part of their customer interactions. And, as a result, their success with customer loyalty is inconsistent and often disappointing.
What is this simple element being neglected by so many companies? It’s building relationships with your customers.
If you hire people that are naturally inclined to build relationships with people, your firm will be better off. <— Click to Tweet
In a world where relationships aren’t being built even with marquee customers, you have a real opportunity to separate your firm from your competition if you focus on creating a team that understands this key value. Building relationships isn’t just about speaking to customers during transactions or deliverables, it’s about knowing your customers.
This means knowing and keeping up with:
- Birthdays
- Anniversaries (personal and professional)
- Career Milestones
- Family Milestones
- Holiday Greetings
Without such knowledge, how can an advocacy program help them build their careers? How can your firm connect emotionally with them? You don’t have to become best friends with your customers or force interactions, but your team should attempt to keep in touch with your customers and clients above and beyond just transactions.
Saar Shwartz, vice president of product marketing and analyst relations at BMC, and his CA manager, Kim Ellis, understand and place a major emphasis on building personal relationships with customers – especially their marquees. They both have taken big steps to reorganize their teams so each member thrives with relationships and will have more time to build deeper ones with customer advocates, with a focus on the firm’s marquee customers.
And, as Citrix’s Pascale Royal says, “You don’t build relationships with companies, you build relationships with people.”
In fact, the best companies have all taken strides to ensure their team is focusing on relationships.
Are you doing the same?
Learn in-depth and actionable steps, not a surface skim, that you can apply to your firm at the 2017 Summit on Customer Engagement.
