Business Affability could turn out to be your best friend when it comes to selling your product or service.
In business, you need to ensure that you deliver that extra something that makes people tell their friends about you.
If you look at the biggest companies out there you can see examples of this.
Some companies employ huge customer service departments to address any complaints or concerns with immediacy.
You have surely seen examples of this on social media. Complaints are dealt with straight away by representatives.
This makes the customer feel valued.
Granted, it is harder to do this with smaller businesses, but it’s still possible to encourage people to like you and respect you no matter what the size of your business, and both online and physical businesses can benefit from affability.
You need to tailor it to your exact business type, but it will pretty much work across the board. You may have considered some of these tips already, but if not give them a go and see if the increased customer focus makes a difference to your overall sales.
Affability and Giveaways
There are many different things you could do to be affable in your business, but here are some of the most obvious ones.
One of the most popular things is to give away free stuff. This can be to both staff members and customers.
Giveaways are particularly effective during promotions. Just ensure the free items have your branding on them to help with future visibility.
For example, you could consider a USB drive for your next promotion. Little gifts like this show benevolence and increase your likability by a huge margin.
Give them away when people file a complaint or randomly ship them away.
The options are endless and can increase your sales because people would rather buy from someone that gives extra than someone who doesn’t. It adds that little touch.
Just make sure you are aware of overproduction as the products will eat into your profit margin.
Focus your Affability
If you are operating completely from an online perspective then you need to ensure that you help your customers where they need help.
When you go into a store there is often someone you can ask questions to and who will help out when needed. You can do this online too.
You probably have ventured to a site where a little pop-up box appeared asking you if you needed help.
By doing this you are showing customer care. Some people are not tech savvy so this option is a great input and you can really pull in more sales by putting people at ease.
Inserts like this give you that edge in your business against businesses that don’t use them.
Another tool that you could use is a FAQ section where you can put people at ease by answering their questions without them needed to speak to anyone.
When someone asks a question to which they haven’t found they answer in your FAQ be sure to answer those questions promptly. If you are getting lots of questions, consider outsourcing someone that could dedicate their time to this tasks only.
Affability to Handle Complaints
All businesses receive complaints. Some people love to complain, others only complain when they have to. Either way, treat them the same way.
Of course, you need to have measures in place to stop people going overboard using your system just to complain, but you need to be affable in the extreme as it can mean the difference between that person coming back or not.
Even exaggerated complaints can be addressed and handled well.
First off, even if you haven’t done anything wrong and you know it, always tell your customer that you are sorry for the inconvenience. At the base, the customer is always right.
Depending on the nature of the complaint, consider giving a money off code or perhaps some kind of gift card. This has two benefits. Firstly, the customer will feel vindicated in their complaint, and secondly, it ensures that the customer will come back since they will need to spend their gift card.
Don’t give money, always give credit. You’re essentially giving yourself another chance with the frustrated party.
Affability in your Communication
Always keep in mind that you want to relieve the customer from stress and avoid to aggravate them by all means.
Don’t overflow your customer’s inbox, and send them value when you do email them.
Send a monthly newsletter, along with some informative points and some of your key deals. Email marketing serves its purpose and it’s still an excellent marketing tool when used correctly.
If you harness the power of social media, which all businesses in this day and age should be able to do to some extent, the same applies. Don’t use click-bait techniques because they only serve to annoy people. Instead, post quality well-researched articles.
There are freelance writers out there for people who don’t feel confident in writing their own article marketing content.
It makes a huge difference when you are adding value to those you interact with instead of wasting their time and forcing them to click through pages or links to get to the punchline of the story. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t sprinkle the posts with links back to your product pages, but ensure the post is actually good too.
Affability to Encourage Feedback
The fact that you value a customer’s opinion is hugely beneficial to you, and your customer will love you for it.
It could also positively affect the operational capacity of your business.
Your customers could let you know about a glitch on the website, or about other navigations details that could be precious to you.
In this case, the customer is essentially doing the work for you in finding issues that need to be fixed.
Also, publish their reviews. If they see that you are taking their feedback into account they will probably appreciate that very much.
Is there a product that is not doing the job expected? Improve them using your customers’ suggestion. Especially if you get more than one relevant complaint about the same issue.
By engaging and letting your customer engage, you can give a better service, tune up your website and improve deliveries.
Feedback is a gift, so use it wisely and you’ll improve your business while maintaining a great relationship with the customer and showing your business to be affable in all regard.
