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Relationship Benefits

Building relationships with your customers is a must when looking to start and grow your business. Some of the substantial benefits of building a quality relationship with customers are explained below.

Customer Satisfaction: Customer satisfaction is an important measurement of how a product or service meets or surpasses the customer’s needs. It is a reliable indication of the potential for repeat business and brand loyalty. Customer satisfaction can be attained only if your customer has an overall good relationship with your business and you consistently meet or exceed their expectations. In today’s competitive marketplace, customer satisfaction is an important performance factor and a basic differentiator of business strategies. Hence, the more satisfied the customer, the stronger the bond they have with your business.

Customer Retention: Customer retention is a strategic process to keep or retain your existing customers and deter them from using other suppliers or organizations. This is only possible when there is a quality relationship between your business and the customer. Usually, a customer will remain loyal to a particular brand or product as their needs grow and only if those needs are properly fulfilled.

Referrals: The most cost effective approach to grow your customer base is through referrals. When customers feel satisfied, they are encouraged to become brand advocates for your business. These referrals are beneficial for your business considering there is little to no cost associated with this process. Referrals are an optimal form of marketing and profit generation.

Revenue Growth: When your business maintains a healthy relationship with customers, revenue will always increase considering current happy customers tend to purchase more. There is also the potential for a satisfied customer to purchase additional products or services when offered the option to bundle those products and services. For instance, if a satisfied loyal customer has home insurance from an insurance company that they trust, there is a high probability that the customer will also purchase property and auto insurance from that same company.

Retention Cost: The cost to service existing satisfied customers is substantially less expensive than that of acquiring new customers considering there is no acquisition cost, your business should already know the needs and wants of existing customers, and active customers will have fewer queries and complaints as they are already aware of your business’s processes, products, and checkout flow.

Relationship Marketing

Strong customer relationships are essential for your business if you desire to increase sales and generate a positive brand reputation. Customers frequently recognize their relationships with businesses similar to personal connections. In analyzing whether customers looking for relationships with businesses actually desired a genuine personal relationship with the business, it was found that a majority of business-to-customer (B2C) relationships were inauthentic when contrasted with genuine person-to-person relationships.[1]

The foundation of relationship marketing includes four essential elements of relationships that include commitment, trust, comprehension, and quality. In an examination of 306 online surveys, researchers confirmed that each of the four elements of relationships influenced customer loyalty. Nevertheless, the customer’s perception and comprehension of quality and value influenced the relationship and purchase intentions. [2]

As a business, you need to identify your target customers by analyzing their lifestyles, psychographics, income, spending capabilities, and mentalities so that you may offer them relevant products and services. For example, knowing that individuals from lower income groups would never be interested in, or have the means to buy, expensive and luxurious products is beneficial in that it allows your business to focus its attention on the likely buyers of your product or service. Trying to sell a Mercedes or a luxury watch to someone who finds it difficult to make ends meet would definitely be a disastrous marketing technique.

 

[1] Bettencourt, L. A., Blocker, C. P., Houston, M. B., & Flint, D. J. (2015). Rethinking customer relationships. Business Horizons, 58, 99-108. doi:10.1016/j.bushor.2014.09.003

[2] Jussila, J. J., Kärkkäinen, H., & Aramo-Immonen, H. (2014). Social media utilization in business-to-business relationships of technology industry firms. Computers in Human Behavior, 30, 606-613. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2013.07.047

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