Here's to the long-term relationship

Unless your business model thrives by selling once to a customer and then moving on, never to transact with that customer again, you need relationships. Some of the best of these will be long-term relationships.

A long-term business relationship with a customer or client offers several likely benefits:

-Providing repeatable or likely-to-recur income

-Comprising one part of "a customer base"

-Ideally, because you know the customer, assuring relative ease of meeting its needs

-Providing referrals, references or a good word for you

-Sometimes, offering frank feedback on how you're doing, which is a good thing

What do you provide to this long-term customer in return? Ideally, we suggest:

-Always assuring fairness in service, pricing, product and service; in some cases, the long-term customer merits priority service

-Going the extra mile to understand the customer's business and, as appropriate, to assess needs and make recommendations

-Providing referrals, reference or a good word for your customer

-Extending the occasional olive branch, if there is a conflict

We feel this issue is timely because we so frequently hear that "the business climate has changed." We hear that customers want more for less. They consider doing it in-house, doing it for less... or doing without. They price shop, deadline shop, consider off-shoring, hire their incompetent cousin to do it. They buy it cheaper, buy it used, fix the old one.

All this and more makes the good long-term business relationships you have more valuable than ever. Treasure and nurture them.

 

Five ways to determine whether customers like your company

For the cynical reader: Yes, it does matter if the customer likes your company, at least in the long run. Companies that are disliked (check out the 10 most disliked companies in America) pay for their unpopularity in a number of ways. There were few lines at BP service stations this spring and summer, even though station owners were far removed from the decisions that precipitated the environmental disaster.

Okay, likability is in many ways separate from business results. Most of us work with a few companies whose names we could use as a curse! Factors including pricing, convenience, product quality, the mass or lack of competition a company faces, and others compete with and sometimes trump the "nice" factor.

Nonetheless... it matters. How is your company doing?

1-Do customers communicate both their satisfaction and their dissatisfaction to your company and its staff? Praise and happy customers are great. Constructive criticism, especially in terms that indicate customers would genuinely like to continue doing business with you, is just as important. Constant angry feedback, on the other hand, must not be construed as a positive.

2-Do customers exit stage right as soon as a viable alternative appears? Not good. If they work with you solely because you're the only provider of certain computer chips or fresh bagels, that's scant protection from new competitors.

3-Do customers who've stopped doing business with you (perhaps because they've retired, moved or changed focus) often keep in touch in some way? Outstanding...

4-What is the daily tone of your customer interactions? Friendly? Curt? Listen carefully.

5-Have you asked or surveyed? "What's our reputation among our markets (or in our community)?" "How are we doing for YOU?" "Would you recommend us?" Make it easy for customers to tell you - online or off, in writing or in person - what they think.

It's good to know.