It’s been said before, and here it is again, your relationships with your customers is the most important relationship you will ever have in business. They pay your wages, buy your products, and you need to value them more than anything else. Without them, your business will most definitely collapse.

But, we continue to make mistakes with them, time and time again, we cause problems for them, or we give them a reason to not trust us, and off they go, to a rival brand. So, what are the biggest mistakes that we make, over and over again, with our customers, and what can we do to make sure these things don’t happen?

Not Having Enough Communication Channels

We need customers to communicate with us, and we have to have as many different channels as humanly possible. Many businesses boast of the fact that they have every single channel available, but they don’t bother to support these channels.

By not having enough methods for your customers to give comments, feedback, or actually to make a standard inquiry, this is where your business is most vulnerable to losing face. As a result, your business will lose reputation or it results in your customers fleeing your business like it’s a sinking ship.

Look at it from your perspective. If you were to contact someone in the office, and they didn’t pick up, it’s frustrating, right? So you try another communication channel, only to have no response. Now, multiply this by thousands, and you’ve got an idea of how many customers you could lose due to sheer frustration!

It’s very difficult to repair reputation after a crisis, but when you have sheer disrespect for your customers by lying to them or, simply not picking up the phone when you say someone’s there, then you’ve only got yourself to blame.

A Lack Of Empathy

This is where marketing techniques can fall flat on its face. You can craft websites, promotional materials, explainer videos, and everything with bells and whistles on it, but if you are creating these materials for the benefit of your company and not the customer’s journey, this is a lack of empathy in motion.

Instead, you need to develop a customer journey from their point of view. It’s simple, but it’s surprising how many businesses completely ignore the customer! Instead, you need to conduct relevant research into what your customers need, and what they emotionally need from your company.

Empathy is a human emotion that needs to be imbued in your business framework. It’s your customer that is going through the experience of your company, not you. So, talk to them! You might be very surprised what they are really thinking.

Ignoring Them

There are so many different things you can ignore, but the customer isn’t one of them! If you ignore their journey, and merely in to interact with the customer during the sales transaction, you are showing your spots.

Clearly, you only care about the green, and the customer is merely a conduit to get you that money you need! We’ve all had an experience with a salesperson who clearly doesn’t listen to what we’re saying, and they are only there for the commission.

And what’s even more insulting is when you have genuine questions for the same person, but they don’t answer them and choose to stick to a script, as this is what they’ve been trained to do, so they can get you in and out of the store as quickly as possible.

This is a poor attitude with regards to a company culture, and this has to be addressed if you are guilty of it. Training your staff in customer service techniques that tread a fine line between making that essential profit, but also making the customer feel they’ve had a worthwhile experience is something that we all can benefit from.

Every customer service assistant is the front line, and they represent your company attitudes and ethos. So they need to be clued up in what you really stand for. And it’s not just about training your employees, but it’s about giving them their dues, and paying them what they are worth. You expect them to do a lot, so you need to reward them personally.

The customer relationship is something we are losing touch in the morning world, and we need to recapture that bond. Hiding behind the smokescreen of Internet pages, home deliveries, and distracting marketing techniques are only taking as further away from that relationship. Rectify these mistakes now.