Simple steps to making your customer feel like a king.
- Offer sound basic customer service and make sure your product lives up to customer expectations. React quickly to complaints and remedy cause and effect.
- Communicate promptly and personally with customers via email and mailouts, or even call directly.
- Think about your store environment: does the music and lighting suit your products, and is it appealing to your target market? What about offering water, a coffee machine or a kids’ play area?
- Where feasible, give customers the time and space to try your products before they buy.
- Get to know your customers, and learn to adapt to their changing needs. Target key customers groups with your marketing and store layouts.
- Be flexible in changing economic conditions with returns policies and methods and terms of payment.
- Think creatively about ways you can take your products to the local market. Don’t just sponsor a local sports team, get involved.
- Start small and test out new ideas for engaging customers with your products. Be creative and think outside the box, new approaches don’t need to be expensive or time consuming.
- Know your target audience, and make sure you can identify whether any new approach is creating the impact you want.
- Even if you are not planning to sell online, think about setting up a simple web site to showcase your products.
- If you are planning to use social media to engage with customers, make sure you have the resources to manage it effectively as a marketing tool.