November 30 is the fifteenth Small Business Saturday, an annual shopping holiday founded by American Express in 2010 and officially co-sponsored by SBA since 2011. Consumers have spent approx $17 billion last 12 months and it isn’t too late for your small business to do great things this weekend. We connected with Jennifer Van BuskirkEVP and GM Mid-Markets at AT&T Business to learn her insights on customer experience strategies that may aid you make the most of this huge opportunity. Here are her five best tactics:
1. People shop at small businesses for unique products – give them a specific, differentiated offering.
Starting a small business takes a lot of courage, and there is a huge opportunity to harness that courage and take a unique approach to your offering. Being capable of tell a consumer that they can not find your product or service anywhere else in their area is a compelling value proposition, in addition to a option to find higher margin opportunities. My family tries to not spend holidays in the same place twice – there is something incredibly powerful about knowing that you simply are entering a completely recent and different experience. Even if the customer hasn’t began looking for it, uniqueness is a strong attraction for all sorts of consumers.
2. Remember that human interaction is your marketing!
Smart trade-offs are key as you grow. Whether you are on the phone, face-to-face, or even digital chat (which is becoming increasingly popular even in small businesses), having a meaningful connection with your customer beyond the transaction itself increases attention and retention. Dialogue improves the core economics of your corporation. When you are dealing with a customer, be 100% present and focus on building authentic, lasting relationships.
3. Learn from your client’s pain points.
Create a culture that rewards uncovering customer pain points – have fun the messenger. Whenever you see confusion or moments of hesitation, there is an opportunity for growth for your corporation. Leverage knowledge from sales, customer support, support teams and social media managers who interact with customers every day. Ask them about the patterns they see. Ask your customers if there’s anything they’d wish to offer that they do not, or if you possibly can make their lives easier in any way. Of course, keep a close eye on your social media and digital footprint, but do the same for your competitors. This is an effective option to discover patterns that could be necessary to your corporation now or in the future. Be true to your vision, but to not the path to achieving it – customer focus is the best path to success.
4. The key to making sure sustainable growth is to focus on customer loyalty.
The most significant lesson I learned is that corporations are likely to focus on recent customers, but the option to keep your organization unique is to make sure no one is treated higher than your current customers. The first step towards customer loyalty is ensuring a consistent customer experience. Think through every step of their journey. Each customer’s experience shouldn’t be exactly the same, but each step ought to be filtered by the same criteria. One thing that each very small and very scaled corporations are often best at is being very specific about who their customers are. Social proof – customer testimonials and reviews – is extremely necessary. Look for ways to surprise and delight your most loyal customers to build goodwill and encourage loyalty. For the holidays, does that mean holding back a few units in case a valued customer comes in at the last minute?
5. Focus on what you do best.
You cannot be every thing to everyone and do it well. The path to sustainable growth begins with knowing the way you will differentiate your organization in the marketplace and stay true to your core mission. Complexity is inevitable, and it is easy for corporations to get distracted trying to fulfill the needs and desires of each customer – often to the detriment of their core customer base. Simplicity requires labor, discipline and the ability to make smart compromises. But these trade-offs ultimately paid off with a strong market position, an engaged customer base, and growing business.