7 Ways to Really Listen to Your Customers

Your small business customers are one of your most valuable assets. Maintain your client and customer relationships with the help of a simple CRM and sales trackng app like Base.

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Your customers are talking, but are you listening?

It is important to utilize various tools and strategies to monitor what your customers are saying about your small business. By doing so you can keep your customers happy and grow your business. Not listening to them on the other hand, can cause you to lose them and possibly even go out of business. The following tips detail how to take note of what the masses are saying about your products or services.

1. Set up Google Alerts

One of the easiest ways to monitor what is being said about your business are Google Alerts. Set an alert to be delivered to your email every time your business name is mentioned on the internet. Since I?m a writer in addition to being an entrepreneur, I set up alerts for both my business names and my personal name. This application is very useful for staying on top of your business?s image. **Bonus Tip: You can also set up Google Alerts to stay in-the-know about what your competitors are doing.

2. Frequently monitor popular business directories and review sites.

At the very least, be sure to log onto sites like Google Places, Yelp, Citysearch, Yahoo Local, etc and check for any comments. If there are comments engage with you customers and respond to them. If the comment was positive thank them and figure out a way to reach out to the customer (via email, telephone, or directly via the review site) and reward them or offer a generous incentive to get them back to your store. Keep customers that take the time out to give a positive review close to you because they care enough about your business to stop what they are doing and share with the world their wonderful experience. If there is a bad review, respond to that comment as well and figure out how you can quickly and effectively resolve the issue and satisfy the customer. Other customers will be glad to see how transparent your business is and that you engage in order to make sure that a solution is found. Once the situation is resolved many satisfied customers would be more than willing to delete or update a bad review of your business.

3. Social media

A great way to listen in on the discussions about your products and service is by accessing social media. Social media allows you listen to customers concerns and evangelism ?and handle problems that may arise. Facebook will notify you when your business has been tagged or mentioned. Twitter has an @ mention feature that lets you track who is publicly mentioning your business. Also visit https://twitter.com/search to see if anyone is taking about your business. Both on Twitter and Google+ you can create hash tags for you business and track when they have been used or mentioned. There are many other social media platforms that you can effectively listen to what is being said.

4. Survey and poll customers.

Send customers a poll via text messages or email after they have made a purchase. Surveys can really help to give you insight on who (moms, businessmen, teens, wealthy seniors, etc) is experiencing what at your business. It?s a good idea to offer an incentive to get the survey or poll completed in a timely manner. Facebook also has a poll function that allows for easily posting a poll or survey and track the responses. Surveys are a timeless way of collecting information to gain valuable feedback.

5. Web contact forms.

Make it easy to send a praise or complaint by utilizing web contact forms on your website. Use creative language for your form, instead of ?Contact Us? instead use, ?Send Us Some Love?. Or ?Vent?, ?Brag?, ?Give Us a Piece Of Your Mind?, etc. Add your business?s personality to better engage your customer during the initial contact period.

6. Hire a mystery shopper / customer.

Employ a mystery shopping company to send a shopper or customer to your business or call and have a few things for them to observe and/or engage in. You can also request that pictures are taken and other things to help better detail the over all experience. Although the mystery customer may not be a regular, you can still gain valuable insight on what someone else would say about your business. If the overall experience happens to positive, he or she may become a regular shopper at your business which makes the investment worth it.

7. Call them yourself

One of the best things about being a small business owner is that you can flex muscles that the big guys can?t, don?t, or won?t. Reach out to your customers yourself and find out first hand how their experiences at your business has been. Go through your CRM and ask your customers about their experiences. They will be thrilled that the CEO, owner, etc, has called them personally to either praise the business or give their opinion on what needs improvement. The word-of-mouth advertisement from this gesture will be sure to travel fast, not to mention growing your business by listening and acting on your customers suggestions.

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It is very important to listen to what is being said about your business so that you can continue to do the things that you do well and/or improve where needed so that your business will thrive.

What ways are you listening to your customers? Share you opinion in the comments section below.

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About AshleyNeal

Ashley Neal is an entrepreneur and small business advocate that enjoys writing about topics pertaining to small business. She is the owner of Small Biz Writer, where she specializes in providing quality content online for small business owners which in turn increases visibility and sales. Additionally, Ashley writes for Examiner.com as the Atlanta Small Business Examiner and she is the editor/writer and publisher of her own small business resource blog Small Biz Diamonds.

Source: http://www.futuresimple.com/blog/7-ways-to-really-listen-to-your-customers/

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