5 Ways Your Small Business Can Impress First-Time Customers

Impressing the first-time customers is perhaps the most challenging task for a business. While satisfying the retainer customers is absolutely important, engaging with first-time customers is crucial for the success of any business. These customers can bring in new customers as they share the positive experience with you. 

In the competitive market today, nothing works well like a verified feedback. Customers are deeply influenced by what fellow customers have to say. Hence, every customer is important for your business and first-time customers should be treated the best. Helping customers to solve their issues is pivotal for your growth because these customers will either be satisfied with your customer support or will move on to your competitor.

Be Prepared to Answer the Queries: 

Research shows that 70% of customer tend to switch brands primarily because of their dissatisfaction with the helpdesk. The volume of your business doesn’t matter to those who are willing to do business with you. What matters to them is your preparedness to answer all the questions. 

Perhaps you are well aware of the fact that flawless communication is the key to the success of your business. But you need to make sure that there are enough channels to get in touch with you in case of urgency. Most of the unsolved queries make their way to the social media where customers tend to share the negative experience. 

Just like prevention is better than cure, your ability to answer questions on time is better than having queries unaddressed. In order to answer questions, you will require to have information on your product, the USP, the brand promise, return policy, refund policy and so on.

Understand your Customers: 

Most of the small businesses fail because they don’t have a clear image of who is their target audience. In order to understand your customer, you should create a profile of your ideal customer. With a comprehensive understanding of your customers, you can start developing fruitful marketing methods. 

While developing the marketing methods, you need to define what is the reason because of which your customers will believe in your product or service. Once you have all of these sorted, you will have more clarification on your strategy. 

Perhaps the first step of attracting new customer is to develop a website that actually informs and educates the buyer instead of trying hard to sell them. In this era of new media, a sophisticated website helps you to establish your credibility which in turn makes the customer more confident about doing business with you.

Also Read: Business Growth Hacks: Utilizing the Power of Surveys

Take Care of the Expectations: 

You can only expect your customers to buy from you when you meet their expectations. Every customer has his or her own expectation when they purchase a product or service from a brand. That expectation may be in terms of the quality of the product, experience with the customer service, ease of user interface and so on. 

Once you personalize your communication to meet the needs of your customers, you will be on the path to develop a long-term relationship. While large corporations might not be able to show their care for the customers very effectively, you can and this will differentiate you from others once you do. 

While purchasing the product, every customer is keen to be treated as valued. Therefore, your approach can make a difference. A simple discount or a coupon to be used in future can do the trick. But you should be able to portray that this is not a no-strings-attached relationship.

Staying in Touch with Customers: 

Staying in touch with customers is another important thing that you need to excel at. Your relationship begins when a customer enters into your shop or online website. Irrespective of whether the customer makes a transaction or not, you should never leave them. Get in touch with them after they make a purchase and be keen to know their feedback. 

Multinational companies usually send a birthday notification or email a newsletter every month. But you can personalize it by offering a discount, especially on his or her birthday. You can also ask them politely to review the service they availed or the product they purchased. 

This unravels the rejuvenating path for you to know the level of satisfaction of the customer as well as to invite other customers. You can also invite your customers for a sale or a conference that you are speaking at.

Thank Them: 

Many businesses forget to express their gratitude to the customers once they are done doing business with them. This is not the way you should adopt. While you can be creative in your way of saying ‘thank you’, you can take a simple route as well. 

For example, many e-commerce businesses add a simple thank-you piece of card to their orders for their customers. Or a small freebie like a keyring or bag of sweets. These small gestures can go a long way in boosting customer satisfaction and winning repeat business. If you're interested in e-commerce, there are many courses (like the ASM Amazing Selling Machine) that show you how you can start your own profitable commerce business.

However, a customary thanks don’t do much good. So it is wise to mean what you say. By resolving an existing issue that your customer is suffering from, you become a valuable resource for them. 

Thus you stay in their top of mind. All of these can help you to grow your business as you ensure customer satisfaction and hence get referred to other potential customers in the neighborhood.