Tips for Creating Long-Lasting Client Relationships

Seeking and establishing a clientele is one of the components to a successful company. Maintaining and growing already-existing client relationships is the uphill battle of your success. Since clienteles are built of varying personalities and business objectives, it can be difficult to keep up with customer service expectations.

There are many ways to improve the processes for creating and maintaining long-lasting client relationships. One way to look at this process is breaking it into two categories: customer feedback and communications. Developing a thorough understanding of those two categories and what they entail will lead you to longer lasting client relationships.

Customer Feedback
Start by incorporating certain programs can showcase your attentiveness and devotion to your clients. For example, consider the client onboarding. The onboarding process allows you to educate and demonstrate to new clients how to use your product or service. It personalizes your dedication to their success and your interest in any questions or concerns they may have. It also eases clients’ time consumption of learning new products and services that could potentially sacrifice their deadlines.

Another program that can assist the learning process is a customer education program. In these education programs, you can have a variety of experts explaining products and services topics that customers may want an in-depth understanding of, like specific features of a product or service. You could seek partnerships with other experts in relevant industries that can provide further insight into specific issues clients may be facing. For example, Coursera offers free courses in general business, computer science, data science, information technology, personal development, language learning, and much more, which could enhance internal staff and clients’ skills. Whether you use an FAQ or general online education format, get creative and cultivate fun, innovative ways to continue education for your clients.

In rewarding your clients for their business, development and implementation of a customer loyalty program could prove beneficial. There are many ways to incorporate these types of programs, such as discounts on service or product packages, renewals of contracts, or other rewards applicable to your products and services.

General feedback can be sought through a survey, or if you want a more interactive method that can be utilized in more than just client satisfaction, you could create user testing and focus groups. From there, you may relay the results to the respective teams for improvement. For example, if the feedback concerns flaws in a service’s distribution or functionality, you could provide the feedback to the client relations team for improvement.

Communications
Keep consistent and adequate communications by developing an advisory board complete with client relations specialists who can ensure clients’ needs are always met and issues addressed. This advisory board can also address internal teams to ensure goals are met, proper practices and policies are followed, and driving quality, cohesive collaborations between all teams to guarantee smooth distribution of products and services to clients. They can relay client constructive criticism and testimonials to the team to build camaraderie and attracting prospective leads.

To remain organized, generating a communications calendar can provide a means of reminders of past and future communications, scheduling and notifications of overdue communications, and staying proactive in all facets of communications. Like a content calendar, a communications calendar can detail when the last communication with a client was and what was discussed at that time. It could also track launches of promotions, new or rebranding of products and services, and related announcements. Either way, communications calendars allow you to continue and renew your relationship with clients.

Adding a company newsletter can foster numerous different avenues of communications. Not only can it be distributed through email automation, but it can also be flexible in what it details. Newsletters can be circulated internally and externally, documenting success stories, new products and services, relevant articles relating to events or news pertinent to your industry, and other content you deem relevant and/or necessary for your team and clients to know.

Along the lines of written communication, it is also important to keep a verbal and physical presence intact. One way you could customize written communication is adding a video of a client testimonial, or an executive detailing a positive message or even discussing a client-related topic can add more personality and boost engagement. Next time you schedule that phone call with a client, ask if they can meet face-to-face whether virtually or in person. It adds a personal connection when you can read their expressions and body language. With FaceTime, Skype, and various video conferencing options, don’t miss an opportunity to make communications more personal.

Retaining and maintaining healthy client relationships is just as important as establishing them. Through cohesive, collaborative communications and incorporating effective feedback into processes, creating long-lasting client relationships should become easier. Insured Solutions will gladly partner with you to ensure flawless implementation of effective communications and customer feedback. We’d be more than happy to be a sounding board for you. Contact us to jumpstart your brainstorming today.

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