Do You Let Customers Get To Know You?
Brand Loyalty is a huge issue for many natural health businesses.
Recently I reported that 68% of customer loss is due to indifference. (ie – They don’t hate you. They’re not dissatisfied. They just don’t care about you enough to choose you over the competition. Painful but true.)
I also suggested that you could retain the majority of these disappearing customers simply by being likeable.
So how does a business demonstrate their like-ability?
Consider this: To KNOW you… is to LIKE you.
How well do you let your customers really get to KNOW you? Is the owner or CEO of your company blogging (or do you just have a generic company website)? Are your sales people encouraged to develop real, caring relationships with customers (or is it “strictly business”)? Are you interacting on your Facebook page (or just posting your latest sales offer)?
Whether you’re a natural health product retailer, a supplier, or a wellness expert, social media tools like blogging, twitter and facebook give you an opportunity to create deeper branded experiences and additional levels of personal customer engagement.
And it needn’t be complicated. Simply engaging your customers will help you retain them. All three interactions on The Rocky Mountain Soap Company’s Facebook Fan Page post below are clearly with current customers who are not likely to suffer from “indifference” any time soon.
Simply engaging your customers will help you retain them.
Over in the organic food delivery department, David Van Seters – CEO and president of SPUD! Organic Delivery – recently started blogging and tweeting. On the SPUD! blog, his “About” page includes a compelling personal message (written in the first person = bonus points!) plus a direct email link! That’s right, he gives you his email address (no forms) and invites his customers to email him directly with their feedback about his company’s service. This guy is NOT in hiding!
David's "About" page tells the story of what he values.
And check out the post below from the SPUD! Vancouver Facebook page. It’s not earth-shattering news. Probably not worthy of a press release… but it’s a compelling facebook update. This quick interaction lets me get to KNOW my organic food delivery company a little better. Now when I get an offer from their competitor, all things being equal, I’ll probably keep choosing SPUD!. Because I know them, even just a little. (see the photo of Mike and the Bike here.)
Here's something to know about us. Cool eh?
The reality is that every company loses customers sometimes. But I doubt either SPUD! or Rocky Mountain Soap Company lose many customers to indifference. What do you think? How will YOU let customers get to know (and like) you better?
I cannot stress enough the importance of sincerely engaging customers. If one takes an interest in their customers, is it surprising that they wouldn’t return the favour? We are genuinely interested in who our customers are – it is part of the reason that we get up every morning and look forward to getting to the store. This is what has made it for us at Rocky Mountain Soap here in Victoria. Engagement is definitely in the mix of successful businesses – SPUD! and many others here in Victoria know and practice this.
Great article – thanks for the shout-out!
Scott
Rocky Mountain Soap (Victoria)
Thanks Scott. I had my own take on what you were doing with RMS social media, and it’s great to get that confirmed first-hand. One of the reasons I used you as an example is that I wanted to illustrate that some of the most valuable social media engagement for business can be SIMPLE. As important as sophisticated social media strategies, campaigns and metrics can be… sometimes it’s just about “sincerely engaging customers.”
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