Love Your Customers

Love your customers. It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? Funny how the simplest things often get overlooked, or become undervalued. You can spend all the time and money in the world on incredible marketing strategies and ad campaigns, but if you don’t show your customers you love them, all that spending and strategizing will be for not.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

For a lot of us in this industry, we provide one crucial piece to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to our customers: the need for security. People need to feel safe, and by nature, a lot of our products and services achieve that. In fact, according to research from Parks Associates, there has been a steady increase in customers that purchase security systems for their homes every year since 2016, and that people are seeking out more systems from security dealers by phone, online or from door-to-door sales.

Going a step further, another tier in Maslow’s hierarchy is love.

We all need to feel loved and cared for. We tend to pursue what makes us feel good and loved. Think about examples in your personal life — would you rather surround yourself with people who make you feel good or bad? So what do you think will happen if you show your customers that you truly care for their well-being? They’ll reciprocate that love you show them by being loyal, and hopefully spreading the good word about your business.

Since you can’t go out and hug each and every one of your customers (plus, social distancing and all…) how can a business show love for its customers? Here are a few of the tried-and-true ways to show your customers you care.

Customer Feedback

One of the best ways to show love is to be a good listener (are we giving business or life advice here? Trick question, it’s both!). Who knows more about the customer experience than the customer? Here are some quick and effective ways to gather feedback from your customers:

• Surveys
• Phone Calls
• Live Chat
• Email
• Social media
• CRM Reporting

When you look at your business through the eyes of your customer, you can truly see where your business is meeting and exceeding expectations, and where you are falling short. Customer feedback can help you improve the following:

• User Experience
• Engagement
• Product Line
• Support

The user experience is critical for online sales, and in today’s world, we can’t emphasize how critical it actually is. Imagine if a BUY button to one of your products suddenly stopped working. It could possibly be weeks or even months before you or one of your team members find it or noticed a major dip in your sales. Customer feedback and an easy pipeline for the customer to let you know that something isn’t working on your site not only improves the customer experience, but saves you and your company from losing out on potential sales.

Consider adding live chat to your website or a simple side bar form for customers to fill out. If they don’t have to search tirelessly for a way to contact you, the more likely you will receive helpful feedback.

Customers can help evolve your products through feedback. Take the AG App for example; AvantGuard created an app to help you manage your accounts. It is constantly being updated and improved by asking for and implementing customer feedback. AG even reached out before building the app to see what customers would like to have available on their mobile devices.

Think about your own products — what if you are constantly hearing from your customer, for example, that they wished your camera would recognize their animals and stop sending them notifications every time their cat walks in view of the camera? Alarm bells should be going off in your head (pun intended) — YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE TRYING TO TELL YOU SOMETHING! This seems like feedback you should probably implement into your product.

Social Media & Testimonials

Social media is a great place to listen and show love for your customers. Did one of your customers have a great customer experience? Report it with a comment letting them know you’re happy to serve them. Did a customer have a bad experience? Respond to their social media posts and try to make their experience better. Others will recognize that your company is willing to go the extra mile to make their experience better. For more information on this topic, check out our article Social Media Marketing Strategies for Alarm Companies.

Featuring testimonials on your website does two things: it promotes your brand by showcasing real people and experiences, and it makes the customer who is being showcased feel empowered.

With social media and proper use of testimonials you can create what’s called “social proof.” Social proof is like a positive affirmation cycle where people become more likely to purchase a product when they see that other people have used and purchased a product.

Grandfathering

Have you changed the pricing on your services lately? That’s fine, that’s just part of business and adjusting with the market. But consider the pros and cons of grandfathering your customers.

Pros:

Maintain trust and loyalty from your earliest customers. – Keeps them from feeling like they were part of a bait and switch.

Upgrading on the customer’s terms – Rewarding long-term customers with newer services with a temporary reduced rate.

Cons:

Losing revenue and undervaluing product – By not increasing prices, you are losing revenue on your services, and also offering more to your customer for less.

Increase churn – This can happen in two ways: overpaying customers can find out about cheaper prices or customers with legacy version of the product may feel undervalued.

Grandfathering takes careful consideration from your business leaders to determine if it is a good business strategy for you.

Loyalty and Referral Programs

If your business is set up to offer this kind of program, it can be a great way to spread the word about your business through your customer base, and also give something back to your customers. You can provide loyalty programs such as, let’s say, if a person remains a customer for two years, they get a month of service for free. Or referral programs where if your customer gets someone else to sign up for your service, you provide them with a $100 Amazon gift card. You can adjust these programs anyway you see fit, but it’s a great way to keep your customers engaged with your brand and feel wanted.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, it doesn’t take a lot of effort on your part to show your customers some love, but the upside can be huge. They don’t call it the golden rule for nothing. It works well in life and in business.