On the open market, the success of your business is mostly determined by how much people like you. These subtle differences are the reason why they hire you or buy from you instead of turning to your competitors. Naturally, likeability is not the only feature that determines success. Not even your own mother is going to work with you if you charge twice as much as some other guy in the same line of work. On the other hand, if your services are of approximately same cost, these subtle differences will determine your success. With this in mind, here are five tips that can make your business more likeable.
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Top Notch Customer Service
First thing you need to do in order for people to like you is – be available to your customers and partners 24/7. Those who have a problem or an issue they want to discuss should be able to reach you (or someone in your employment) at any time. Bad customer service is one of the things that will earn your company a negative review in no time.
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Personal Approach
In the modern digital marketing, most channels of outreach seem generic. Emailing, unless exquisitely imaginatively done, may seem spam-like or done by a robot. Contacting on the social networks faces the same problem, which is why you may want to take a bit more personal approach. One of the things you can do in order to appear more organic is use telemarketing services in order to get in charge of the appointment setting. At some occasions there is nothing more reliable than a personalized phone call.
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Asking the Real Questions
A lot of companies rely on customer feedback in order to improve. Still, if you are to really show your client base that you care, you need to learn how to ask the real questions. Questions like ‘would you like a better service’ or ‘would you like to receive a free gift’ are completely useless since they are close-ended. Also, they have only one possible answer, since they are posed so that your clients will feel ridiculous answering anything but ‘yes’. Give your clients open-ended questions, where they can really give you a piece of their mind and they will know how to appreciate this gesture.
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Dealing with Negative Feedback
Dealing with negative feedback is always more important than responding to compliments. While the latter only serves to boost your vanity, the first one gives you an opportunity to turn a dissatisfied customer into a loyal fan or to significantly improve your way of doing business. Your first instinct may be to try and argue with the one leaving this comment, but this course of action is always counterproductive. What you should do is just thank the person in question for their invaluable insight and promise to make some changes in the nearest future.
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Be Firm in What You Stand For
Sure, some people may not agree with you but nobody likes a turncoat. Every company needs to have basic ethical principles and goals in form of things they stand behind. Changing these attitudes will only demonstrate indecisiveness which is not something you want to be associated with. This is why, you need to carefully think about your brand even before you start doing business. Some errors are too expensive to remedy later on.
Conclusion
While some of these features may not give immediate results, each of them may determine the success of your business in the long run. By taking these necessary percussions you are ensuring that your business has a positive image amongst your target audience. Sometimes, this is all it takes for your business to flourish.
Dan Radak is a marketing professional with ten years of experience. He is a coauthor on several websites and regular contributor to BizzMark Blog. Currently, he is working with a number of companies in the field of digital marketing, closely collaborating with a couple of e-commerce companies.
