In its most basic terms, the relationship between a customer and a brand is a simple one. You provide a product, the customer buys it, and this completes the transaction. But in a value-driven economy many businesses compete on customer satisfaction alone.
When your interactions with customers are solely transactional, it is easy for them to buy a similar product from a different brand next time. The goal for your business is to retain customers and turn them into repeat buyers. With the right customer experience strategy, customers can get to know you and come to care about your success. This also makes them more likely to refer you to friends and families and extend the trust they give you to their loved ones.
Customer intimacy is all about how much a company can address customers’ needs. It involves close contact with customers across the customer journey. It aims to create a relationship in which customers come to rely on you in whole new ways.
Businesses of any size can benefit from customer intimacy strategies. In this article, we will cover a few things you can do to improve these values for your brand.
Adopt More Customer-centric Policies
The first step to building a better rapport with customers is to stop prioritizing the immediate bottom line over your consumers. Then, in the long-term, higher customer retention will pay you back for the small sacrifices you make along the way.
Create policies that make customers feel safe, heard and appreciated. Common examples include generous return policies that let customers send items back free of charge. But, again, it’s about money-back guarantees and support policies that help customers feel heard.
Make Them Feel Appreciated
You know those VIP customers that have come back to your business time and time again? Make sure you don’t take them for granted. Make customers feel valued by offering perks for their loyalty. Reach out to customers with high lifetime value to give them benefits like early access to new product launches or even discounts.
You can also show customers that you value their opinions by giving them plenty of avenues to get in touch with you and discuss. Create a customer forum for them to communicate, and make it easy for customers to send feedback via your website. Utilize autoresponders to send emails that thank customers for purchases, wish them a happy birthday, and follow up on complaints.
Write Case Studies About Your Customers
Consumer insights companies use case studies to create customer personas and help brands decide which products and campaigns would work well for their target audience. But studying your customers can also help you market yourself directly. You can share positive customer experiences as social proof, an excellent boon for customer intimacy.
Host Customer-Focused Events
Most business nowadays happens online or over the phone and requires minimal face-to-face contact. But as we all know, those personal encounters often build the most trust and intimacy.
In-person or even digital events can help establish customer intimacy. Think of webinars, training, events and trade shows as good examples of customer-focused events. Live Q&A sessions are also a great way to let customers engage with new products and learn more about your brand.
Create more Value for Customers with your content
And finally, you can establish better customer intimacy by making yourself a valued, helpful force in your customers’ lives. There are plenty of opportunities to answer customer questions, help them with a problem, or make their day a little easier. Create free educational resources, checklists and templates to offer more value to your customers.
This feeds right into your content marketing strategy! Provide resources through blogging, webinars, videos and social media content. These resources will make customers appreciate you more and function as marketing materials that will help you get seen by new leads online.
Get to Know Your Customers Intimately
To create the kind of customer intimacy that will lead to better customer retention, you will need to get to know your customers more intimately. This is where a consumer insight company like ZAK can come in. ZAK works with a thriving network of engaged U-30 consumers to help groundbreaking brands better understand the needs of the most potent target audiences. So get in touch today to benefit from better insight.
