Advice for Retailers
How to Create Customer Enthusiasm
Written by Samuel Muriithi for Gaebler Ventures
Ensuring that your customers get a memorable shopping experience every time they visit your premises is one of the surest ways of securing repeat business and by extension new business from new customers who've been told about you. What are those things that you should start doing to create customer enthusiasm?
You cannot create customer enthusiasm for a group of people you don't know anything about.
The first step should therefore be to make an evaluation of the customer base so as to determine the core needs they have and how you are going to help solve these. You should also establish who your best customers are and why this is so. In this way you will find it easy to keep them pleased.
Creating customer enthusiasm and sustaining it is all about keeping the customers in mind whenever you find it necessary to implement a new process in the business. Before you invest in a bar code reader or credit card pay system for example, ask yourself what effect this will have on your customers. Always keep them in the loop of things to avoid incurring expenses that won't be appreciated.
Customers really appreciate genuine care and concern when it is offered to them and more so because they know they cannot demand it. You don't have to overdo this - simply ask how their day was and gradually this will transform into an amicable relationship that will give them little reason to shop elsewhere - lest you take unfair advantage of this.
To create customer enthusiasm you really must make an effort to ask for feedback and then make a follow-up on whatever issue that has been raised. The feedback you get can either be positive or negative. When it is positive you should not rest on your laurels just yet - let the customers suggest ways through which you can serve them better. The same applies when the feedback is negative - don't resort to defensiveness, take the blame squarely and ask for ideas on how to do things better.
The aspects of trust and consistency are very much appreciated by customers. They take great solace and comfort in knowing that they can rely on you for the same great products and services any day of the year. Sometimes your customers may require something that is out of your league. Rather than pretend that you are capable of offering the same and subsequently giving a shoddy result, it is best that you refer them to a more qualified provider. This way you will foster trust and respect and you won't risk soiling your hitherto good name.
Another way through which you can create customer enthusiasm and maintain it is by always ensuring that your customer can do business with you over and over again without ant prohibitive hassles. You can give the best customers a number they can place orders through just to ensure they don't miss out on what they regularly buy.
Samuel Muriithi is a business owner in Nairobi, Kenya. He has extensive international business experience in the United States and India.
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