connecting with customersHappy customers buy more, and recommend your business to their colleagues, friends, and family. Clearly, one of the best ways to grow your business is to improve your relationship with your customers.

Carol tackles this topic in her recent post on the Nextiva blog, “5 Ways to Make Your Customer Relationships Even Better.” She begins:

“As a smart business owner, you already know that your customers are king. Whether you know them personally or serve them through an e-commerce store, you never take them for granted — and you always provide high-quality products or services.

No matter how well you care for your customers, there are always more steps that you can take to get closer to the elusive goal of perfection. If you want to keep your customers happy and loyal in a highly-competitive business environment, complacency is not an option. Here are five ways to help relationships continue to flourish and grow:

1. Try to give them what they ask for

When it comes to handling special customer requests, businesses run a fine line between dexterity and affordability. If you run a service business, dexterity often wins out. For example, it can be an easy matter for a PR firm to honor unusual client advertising specifications or even for a design company to switch from paintings to classic Monopoly boards on the walls of a client’s office space.

On the other hand, what if a customer wants you to alter products specifically for them? If your company makes toy trucks for toy stores and a customer wants purple ones when there is no general demand for this color, you need to get out the Excel spreadsheet and figure out the costs to produce custom trucks. If you have the resources to offer a custom job at a price that is attractive to the customer, do it.

Never forget that dexterity and affordability are only two concerns. The third issue is whether the customer requests make sense for them. Your expert guidance might save customers from bad ideas.”

You can read the rest of the post here.