Owing to the proliferation of ways in which you can nowadays interact and engage with your clients on a personalised level, customers are starting to expect a personal experience that caters to their unique needs and takes into consideration what they like and dislike in service delivery.
Today’s advanced message technology, sophisticated online experiences and customised communications has caused an expectation in the customers that they will be wooed for their custom. Conversely, marketing professionals are experiencing the pressure to not only know their market implicitly and never set a foot wrong, but also to come up with new and creative ways to enhance the already enhanced customer engagement experience.
Generating competitive response rates in the market has become increasingly difficult. But what do people want more than anything when dealing with a marketing machine? They want to deal with people.
The answer in winning the battle for the customer is in personalising interaction and engagement as much as is possible.
And we are not talking the good old-fashioned “insert customer’s name here” approach to communication. Today, technology allows us to do data mining and segmentise customers. Any marketing professional who understands how to leverage technology can take personalised communications to an unprecedented level, all the way to a one-to-one dynamic. The downside is that once the customer starts expecting this, any communication that misses the mark by the smallest of margins will be ignored at best and called out as poor customer service at worst.
First impressions largely set the tone for relationships when people meet one on one, and none more so than with a marketing relationship. One wrong foot here or word out of place can prematurely end the relationship, while pleasing and enjoyable engagement will lead to customer loyalty and a relationship for life.
Once you have established that personal, one-on-one relationship with a customer, you need to nurture and maintain it, same as any personal relationship. In our personal lives we need to nurture our friendships in order not to lose our friends and loved ones. In business, a personal one-on-one relationship is as fragile and needs as much care – a customer has come to expect personalised service so if you suddenly don’t call or visit anymore, they might just find a new company to assist them.
If you want great customer relationship management, you need to work on personalising your relationships with your customers. Look out for future blogs on how to build the best possible personal relationship with your customers.
