Drive Business Growth by Focusing on Your Customers: The Facts and Tips.

The customer is always said to be right for good reason: a business cannot succeed without a customer base.  Trying to understand and satisfy customers should be a priority focus for businesses with equal time and effort applied as put in to other initiatives, such as marketing. Without enough focus on your customers, you're costing your business its success.

In a recent article on the Salesforce blog, research from a variety of sources revealed the following facts about customer service:

• 45% of customers will abandon an online transaction if their concerns are not addressed quickly
• It is around 7 times more costly to attract a new customer than to retain an existing one
• 89% of customers have stopped doing business with a company due to poor customer support
• Customers are twice as likely to share negative customer support experiences than they are to talk about positive ones
• It takes 12 positive customer experiences to make up for one negative experience
• 55% of customers would pay more for better customer experience

TOP TIPS FOR GETTING RESULTS BY FOCUSING ON CUSTOMERS

1. Train Your Team for Effective Customer Care: The main issue with customer care in most companies today is lack of effective training, or care for the customers. The concern of most customer support agents is to quickly deal with a customer, and as a result they do the minimum task of answering a customer's questions with an inadequate answer.  Invest the time to train your team to go above and beyond for the customers.

2. Take Care of Your Employees: For your employees to really care about your customers, leading to explosive business growth for you, it is important for you to care about them first. One of the reasons most employees aren't invested in helping customers solve their problems is because the company they work for doesn't really take care about them; this can be manifested in the form of low wages, poor positions, or lack of training. If you want your employees to care about your business and go above and beyond for it, you need to lead by example and make them feel valued and cared about.

3. Enforce a Customer-Centric Sales Practice: Most businesses prioritize making sales over their customers' needs, and as a result will do anything to increase sales even if it is at the detriment of their customers. Apply a customer-centric approach that is based on trust between customers and your company.  This means listening to your customers' goals and concerns and being able to respond effectively and with care. Take the time; make the effort and the return on success will be positive growth outcomes for your business.