Building Customer Relationships – New LinkedIn Group

I once heard someone say – if you can’t find exactly what you want – build it yourself. I love the lively discussions that happen on LinkedIn in the various groups. I belong to several; local groups with a variety of business types and industry specific groups for speakers, writers, customer service and HR professionals.

I have answered questions and joined/started discussions but I felt like something was missing. We talk about CUSTOMER SERVICE but I didn’t see a group that dealt with the “relationships” we have with customers.

Customer service is what happens the first time we see the prospect and hopefully turn them into a customer. It is all about that experience. But what about AFTER the sale?

So today I started a new group called Build Customer Relationships with the goal being the creation of a platform where we can share ideas for how to keep that relationship alive once the customer walks out the door so they Remember – Refer and Return.

I started by asking – What is the most important part of building relationships?

Zane Safrit • The most important thing? How do you build a sustainable business without building customer relationships? Riffing quickly here we can see our economy’s performance over the past few years reflects a lack of customer relationships and the investments in meaning, purpose, engagement, leadership required to build them. It is possible to see our economy’s recovery dependent on resuming that primary purpose of a business: to create customers.

Ivana Taylor • Well – you have to give yourself credit too. Building customer relationships is like motherhood, America and Apple pie. Yet we still think it’s more important to bring NEW customers on (and it is important) but then ignore the customers that have been with is.

So the most important thing in building customer relationships might be just to STOP IGNORING your existing customers and treat them with love and attention.

Jay Izenman • This is it, Answer the phone!! There is no better thing to build a customer relationship then answering the phone, getting back to people and just making them feel wanted as a customer. If you don’t talk to your customers, you will have nothing to build. And thats it in a nutshell…

Mike Link • In my experience, I have found that the ball is dropped after the sale. Too many sales reps out there think their job is finished as soon as they make the sale. Big mistake! To build and maintain customer relationships, the communication after the sale is just as important, if not more important, than the actual sale itself.

Those aren’t the only comments – others mention that building relationships requires trust, honestly, integrity and so much more.  All good conversations.

I hope you will consider joining Build Customer Relationships. The discussions are monitored and I’m requesting that we use the forum for discussion not as a sale platform.

What do you think is the most important component to building customer relationships?