Keep your customers close: 5 tips for SMBs to build loyalty

As you plan your finances and cashflow to prepare for a possible recession, look at improving your customer experience so that your loyal customers are happy and continue to do business with you. Here are 5 simple tips you can follow.

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Keep your customers close: 5 tips for SMBs to build loyalty

Key takeaways

  • SMB owners should not neglect the importance of customer experience as they plan for an upcoming recession and economic uncertainty
  • Providing positive customer experiences can help build loyalty among existing customers
  • Start by making it easy for customers to reach your business, giving them multiple channels to contact you and adopting unified communication and collaboration tools

Keep your customers close: 5 tips for SMBs to build loyalty

28 July 2022 | SMB, Digitalisation, SaaS, Voice and Collaboration | 5 min read

During difficult times, business owners may prioritise cashflow and revenue generation over customer service. In times of recession, consumers may be more careful with spending, making it harder for businesses to win new customers. This makes it critical for businesses to make sure that existing customers do not leave.

A general adage in business is that it costs five times more to find a new customer than to retain an existing one. Providing good customer experiences can help businesses build loyalty with existing customers and keep them committed to doing business with you. Here are five simple customer experience tips that can help you keep your existing customers happy.

1. Be reachable for customers even in hybrid work mode

When your customer service officers work from the office, they will usually be reachable at an office landline. But when you have hybrid work arrangements, some of these employees may be working from home or coworking spaces, making it hard for customers to reach them by phone. The alternative is for customers to call individual support staff members on their mobile phones, which may involve multiple attempts or line transfers and lead to poor experiences.

To make it easy for customers to reach your care team members, adopt a unified communications tool like Singtel Teams UC Direct Connect. This will enable your team to take calls from their Microsoft Teams app, which they can install on their mobile devices. So when customers call the office landline, they will still be able to reach the right customer support staff without transfers.

65% of consumers in Singapore are frustrated with inconsistent digital interactions with brands, according to Twilio’s State of Customer Engagement Report 2022. Not being able to connect with someone from customer support and being transferred multiple times to different service representatives was singled out as one of the main reasons.

2. Give customers more channels for speed and personalisation

The phone has traditionally been the most common channel of reaching a customer service team. But increasingly, customers are finding the long wait times to be inconvenient, which can lead to poor experiences.

New digital channels like messaging platforms, chat and video calls are gaining favour among customers due to their speed and personalisation. Video calls for example can be effective for establishing a personal touch, especially for consultations and clarifications while chat services can automate responses personalised to each individual customer’s profiles.

This means that SMBs need to have more than just the phone as a channel for customer service. Think of how you can leverage various digital platforms to make it easy for customers to get the support they need. This could be through a self-service portal that shows essential info about products along with a checkout feature and options to schedule a video call or talk to a chatbot on your website.

According to a survey from the Qualtrics Experience Management (XM) Institute, 37% and 21% of respondents preferred to use self-service options on their mobile phones and computers respectively for getting status updates on orders. Only 20% of respondents preferred talking to someone on the phone for the same need.  

3. Back up customer-facing data to the cloud

To help customers research before purchase, it is important for some essential webpages such as those containing information on products (their features, price and any photos or other media), and checkout pages, to be always available. This means that these pages have to be backed up to avoid downtimes in the event of a cyber-attack or system crash.

If your website also collects customer data, you will need to ensure that this data is protected. Today's sophisticated cybercriminals are capable of deploying dangerous malware that can damage your server or network, and in the process steal sensitive customer data. Backing up such data is essential for retrieving it in the event of a breach and also for complying with data regulations.

To ensure that such critical data is backed up and protected, SMBs can explore cloud-based solutions such as Singtel Cloud Backup and Recovery that automatically consolidates backups and protects against cyberthreats. It can back up data from common sources such as Microsoft 365, and Google Workspace as well as endpoints and servers.

In a survey conducted by digital security firm Imperva, 50% of APAC respondents said they would stop using a company’s services following a serious data breach.

4. Avoid silos by unifying communications

One of the things that frustrates customers is having to repeat their personal details when their query gets transferred across different staff members. This usually occurs when businesses have no single database to store and update customer information. This can lead to poor experiences for customers and they may even give up trying to buy from the business altogether.

One way to overcome this is to collect and store all  information in a single platform that acts as a knowledge repository accessible for all customer service team members. A simple spreadsheet in Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace can be a good place to start. As you gain more customers you will benefit from more sophisticated customer relationship management (CRM) tools such as HubSpot or Salesforce or Deskera. 

5. Ensure customers are updated of any delays

Delays in delivery or response, although inevitable, can be sources of frustration for consumers. Businesses may encounter delays due to supply chain disruptions and uncertain economic conditions, such as what we experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. This can only lead to more frustration among consumers who may then move to a competitor.

It may be impossible to avoid delays altogether but what businesses can do is to keep customers updated at all times. If your business relies on logistics and delivery teams to ship products regularly, make sure that they are equipped with the right tools to notify customers about potential delays on the go.

Apps like Microsoft Teams can help in coordinating logistics and keeping field workers connected, while the Singtel Teams UC Direct Connect add-on can allow them to make calls from the app using an office number.

41% of Singapore respondents in a PwC survey claimed that delays in product delivery has a significant impact when they shop online.

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