How To: Improve Your Client Relationships

The phrase “it’s cheaper to keep ’em,” doesn’t apply just to spouses but to clients as well. Consider Bain& Co.Research that found increasing customer retention rates by 5 percent boosted profits 25 to 95 percent. This is hardly surprising news, but what exactly can you do to nurture your personal relationship with clients so they stick around for the long haul?

Perfecting the customer experience is one way.Nicholas J. Webb, a speaker, holder of more than 42 patents and longtime management consultant, has conducted extensive research on this topic. In fact, he says perfecting the relationship with your customers is the essence of business today.

“The future of innovation is not inventing a shiny new thing, but giving the customer a new experience,” he says, pointing to Uber as a prime example. The tech company did not reinvent taxis, but rather how the client engages with ride-booking services.

 To create deep and lasting client connections,Here are my suggestions:

1. Understand your client.

Forget demographics. Instead of focusing on income, race, gender and age, drill down into customers’ loves, hates, habits and goals—all before you even think about selling to them. This involves having meaningful,one on one conversations; asking about their past experiences with other professionals in your field; and learning about their definitions of success. From this data you can construct what We calls “nodes,” or customer profiles based on personality types and goals.

2. Create a customer experience for each node.

 Most businesses can break down the customer experience into five touch points:

• Pre-touch. Your marketing, social media, blog and word-of-mouth referrals all set the stage for the customer’s experience and expectations.

• First touch. The initial interaction with your product, team or location. “Eighty percent of your client’s permanent impression of you comes from that first touch,” Webb says.

• Core experience. “You must be a constant, active observer—always looking for clues where you could potentially miss the mark with your client,” he says, noting that the vast majority of unhappy customer experiences occur during this period, when familiarity can breed laziness, if not contempt.

• Report out. Create systems that measure and prove your value to them. Share these results in regular reports.

• Send-off. Leave them with something unexpected. At the end of routine meetings with clients, Webb might announce that they can expect a customized white paper to share with the rest of their team, or an instructional video of him elaborating on one of the meeting’s points.

3. Lie.

To be sincere, we as business people commits fraud at each touch point.At every touch point, I tell a lie,I tell my customers that they will get a lot less than I know I’ll deliver. I always exceed the baseline level of client expectation.”

Written by Emma Johnson