How do businesses usually make sure they are not going to fail? It is important to know how to set up the business that is likely to succeed.
Making the dream come true is not rocket science. The most vital thing we have learnt is to treat our customers the way we would like them to treat us. It is crucial to make every single customer feel like they are the most precious. Anyway, we work with the same human beings as we are, so we would like to be in good relationships.
How is the partnership created?
Here you go. Having a pool of customers makes sure you have done your best to make them happy with the choice they have made by beginning to work with you. Done? Great! This is how partnership is being built today.
Why do you need to take efforts and build relationship with the customers step by step? Sometimes it is hard, sometimes easy, but it is always worth the effort. Who is going to make referrals or give you references? The answer is those customers whom you could call your trusted partners.
We make partnership easy. We usually have the same goals as our future partners do. Normally while beginning to work with a customer we do not think of starting mutually beneficial partnership in the long run at once. Though creating common projects is already mutually beneficial.
Both sides’ responsibilities
Here we are talking about another type of mutual benefits. We get involved in our customer’s business, and its growth becomes a part of our success.
One day both sides come to the point when they are more than just a vendor and a client. Customer experience and high-quality service are the keys to a long-term partnership. The mix of both adds value creating a bond in the complicated vendor-customer relationship. Now that it has been built, there is no chance that the customer will leave you without a tear in his eye.
Both parties have their own responsibilities and benefits. They become flexible and help each other to succeed since at some point they start sharing the success.
Of course not all the customers will become your partners. Some of them just have another direction, but building trustworthy relationship will give you an opportunity to apply.
How to transform a customer into a partner? The experience we have gained. Tips and tricks from our Customer Experience.
Customers should be treated as business class passengers or even better. It might be difficult at first, but there are some basic rules to follow:
Make your customer feel a part of your team.
Repeat it as a mantra, and at some point it will come true. The team has the same goals and one path to success.
Make sure you know how your client’s dog feels today.
In other words, talk to your customer for any reason that is relevant to both parties. Be proactive, but don’t bother them if they are introverts, it will do no good.
Honesty is a must.
If the news is good, share it, and if not, you have no choice but to share it. Telling bad news has at least two solutions to get out of the situation you are in and well-grounded reasoning to explain how you got into it. Being honest and transparent in tough situations is much better than attempts to hide the truth and thus getting into more trouble.
Do not underestimate the influence of service quality.
89% of the clients refuse to cooperate further in case they receive a poor-quality service, regardless of how the product or technology advanced is. To cut it short make them feel happy after every conversation with you.
Value your client’s feedback.
No matter whether it is good or bad. Mostly bad feedback is even better than good as it reveals the stuff you have to change to improve. Once improved, it will help you avoid the same situations in the future.
Finally, let the client know that his opinion was taken into account even after he had become your ex-customer. Doing all that stuff will definitely help you gain the loyalty of your customers and build partnership with them.
A few words of self-praise. The partnerships we have built.
The first customer that became our partner is Korporatio. It is the company that has developed a legal framework to incorporate real-world enterprise on the blockchain. Our client wished to improve the way its platform used to operate. Korporatio enables document transactions inside the system, which allows to save the time from monotonous work with paper documents. We realized that the project was interesting for us since we had never been involved in a similar business before.
Our tech guys were already a bit bored with ordinary projects (well, none of them is ordinary, each one is precious). A system for Smart companies had no lawyers involved in all the possible legal iterations. So, was there a chance that we would lose the opportunity to get involved in something like that? No way! To build it via Blockchain and make it secure for every user? Easy! OK, it was not easy, but it was interesting, to some extent challenging. We have learned to build partner relations step by step. Our tech guys are the CTOs of the partner companies that apply their own expertise to help both companies to grow.
Was the client satisfied?
For us it is essential to hear the clients, and if the client is not satisfied with anything from our team at a particular stage, we solve this issue together. Anyway, stuff happens. Having an open and honest relationship requires admitting that something is wrong from your side and making sure you fix it. Are you unhappy with someone or something during our work together? If yes, then let us start from the very beginning and find the root cause. What makes you feel blue today? Us? We are going to fix it shortly!
What makes your clients happy or how to keep them for years?
A guide on what kind of person you should be to succeed in partnership with your client:
Whatever happens, learn from your own mistakes and avoid them in the future. It hurts to admit mistakes, but there is no other way.
Be flexible but sensible. It is good to follow clients’ needs and priorities, but when it comes to tech stuff make sure that the clients understand what they want and why. If not, then explain why sometimes the «wants» are not a good idea if they are going to affect a significant part of work.
Analyze the situation you are in, because generation of new goals is based on conclusions.
The latter quality is important to conduct business analysis. If you come across the idea that you like, follow this business analysis agenda:
Find out if this idea is relevant today and how interesting it is for you.
Analyze the perspectives of this idea, especially the financial profitability.
Research the territory, i.e. new market geography (mentality, viewpoints, market situation, etc.).
Following these guidelines is an ideal way to prevent the client that has become your partner from switching to rivals.
Conclusion
The world is constantly changing, and unpredictable things always take place. In order to avoid facing negative cases it is good to become partners with the clients. Do not forget to value your clients and be ready to cooperate with them further!