by: Sarah Rose Stack

Get to Know Your Customers Day is a day that reminds business owners to put customers first. Customer Experience should be at the top of your business priorities in 2021. Why? Because Customer Experience is set to overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator this year. 

Customer experience is your customers’ perception of how your company treats them. These perceptions affect their behaviors and build memories and feelings to drive their loyalty. Very simply put, customers value a better customer experience so much that it affects their buying habits. In fact, according to a Walker Study, 86% of buyers were willing to pay more for a better customer experience. “Customers no longer base their loyalty on price or product. Instead, they stay loyal to companies due to the experience they receive. If you cannot keep up with their increasing demands, your customers will leave you.” This year, Get To Know Your Customers Day can be more than a “social media holiday”. It can be the starting point for a new business strategy in 2021. 

How to Get to Know Your Customers: 

• Use technology to your advantage.
• Segment email campaigns by audience and content desires
• Show customer appreciation by sending special deals or content to existing customers
• Use Social Media to feature your clients and promote their services 
• Survey clients to find out what services and products they want or need
• Respond to reviews on search engines and social media 
• Thank people publicly when they leave a positive review
• Respond to negative reviews by asking more questions and offering to find a solution. Addressing negative experiences in an empathetic way can turn a negative customer experience into a positive one. (Whatever you do, do not ignore or delete negative reviews.)
• Follow Up with your customers. How was their experience? Do they have any questions? 
• Build a sense of community. Repost clients/customers on your social media or social media “stories”, feature them in newsletters, cross-promote, like/comment on your customers’ posts. In general, treat social media like an online coffee shop where you are having conversations rather than a place where “you have to post”. 

With a more personalized application of technology, we can connect with our clients more, get to know them better, provide better service, and build more meaningful relationships. Remember that feeling when the owner of your favorite shop on Main Street knew your name and was always there to help answer questions in their store? That’s the feeling you should be aiming for when you are celebrating #GetToKnowYourCustomersDay today and every day.