How Can You Virtually Maintain Customer Relationships?
- Jitender Lakhani (JL)
- October 18, 2021
- Category: Buyers and Customers
Concerns about the coronavirus outbreak have caused us to change how we work. Remote working has become the new standard, necessitating a rethinking of how we handle various areas of business. One area in particular on which you should concentrate is your client relationship management. Many businesses are opting for an automated CRM to keep their sales processes running while they work remotely.
Prospects have become reluctant as a result of the economic downturn, making it tougher to close sales. Today, we’re going to elaborate on that by giving you specific tactics for maintaining customer relationships while working remotely.
- “Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, ‘Make me feel important.’ Not only will you succeed in sales, you will succeed in life.” – Mary Kay Ash
1. Maintain the quality of your service/product:
Uptime of 100 percent is utopian, and clients recognise this to a considerable extent. Having said that, achieving near-perfect service uptime is a distinct possibility. Backups and catastrophe recovery scenarios should also be planned ahead of time.
The same may be said for sustaining service quality. Customers have come to anticipate a particular degree of service quality from a brand. Even when teams are working remotely, this level of quality must be maintained. It’s critical to recognise that how teams work (in-office or remotely) is a company issue, not a consumer one.
2. Proactively listen to your customers:
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel,” Maya Angelou once stated.
This is a good moment to practise active listening. It is more vital now than ever before. Remind your staff to listen carefully to their client’s concerns and to demonstrate that they are truly concerned.
How do you go about doing this? Make a virtual cup of coffee. Discuss the issues they’re dealing with. Consider how you can work together. Propose solutions to their difficulties right now. People still need to do business, even if many things are questionable right now. Contracts are still in the works. And there are still issues to be resolved. With empathy, listen to your customers.
3. Respect your customers' time:
Relationship building is an important aspect of sales and customer success. Of course, in many circumstances, treating a possibility to dinner isn’t feasible right now.
Being considerate of your clients’ time is sometimes the finest way to express respect. Allowing small talk to linger isn’t a good idea. Maintain a tight and focused agenda so that your consumers can return to their job and home obligations.
Treat the meeting start time as a covenant if a customer made the time to meet with you. Take thorough notes, send follow-ups, and, once again, concentrate on how you can assist.
4. Have a consistent support system in place:
The best method to assure maximum availability is to have a centralised solution in place where consumers can log in concerns that can be picked up by a support member as soon as they are available. To accomplish this, a CRM solution like as Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics is ideal. CRMs also connect different communication channels (such as social network accounts, email, chatbots, and so on), allowing Omni-channel firms to communicate with customers through a single gateway.
With a CRM in place, remote workers can operate around the set SLAs. A consumer will be fine if a ticket is picked up after fifteen minutes, but not if the phone is left ringing for more than one minute.