The third Thursday in every quarter is “Get to Know Your Customers Day.” If you haven’t heard of this before, or haven’t been participating, now’s a great time to start.
As a busy broker, we know it can be difficult to find the time in your schedule to get to know each customer, but it’s well worth the effort. Having a full understanding of who your clients are and their challenges may help you serve them better.
Getting to know your customers doesn’t have to be difficult or time consuming. Start participating in National Get to Know Your Customers Day with these four simple ideas.
1. Ask for their opinions, and listen to them
Asking your clients to give honest feedback about your service as their broker creates an opportunity for an honest dialogue. And it doesn’t have to be complicated; sending an email with a simple prompt should do the trick. You can ask them to give as much or as little detail they want.
If possible, you can also schedule a phone call, video chat or in-person meeting to discuss their thoughts and feedback about your role as their broker. Not every client may be open to the idea, but the ones who are will likely give you worthwhile information.
While just asking for their feedback alone is enough to get to know your customers a little better, the work shouldn’t stop there. Review the feedback you received with an open mind and willingness to improve. Make a list of actionable takeaways and put them into practice as soon as possible -- you might just notice they’ve made a difference when the next survey comes around.
2. Give incentives for feedback
If you’re struggling to get an ideal rate of response from just asking for feedback, don’t be afraid to give incentives. Depending on how many clients you have and what your budget allows, you can offer a small gift card for every response, or enter all of the responses into a raffle and choose one winner. In addition to getting more responses, you’ll give your clients something to get excited about which puts another positive interaction in the books.
One thing to be mindful of is that some clients may not be allowed to accept gifts as per company policy. It’s still important to let those clients know that their feedback is valued and to set aside time for a conversation to find out more about their recent challenges and successes.
3. Create customer profiles
A simple exercise that can help you get to know your clients better is creating customer profiles for them. Make sure to include personal details about your contacts, such as their birthdays or how long they’ve been employed at their company. Not only does this help you get to know them better, having all of this information handy can make it easier to send personalized messages such as a “Happy Birthday!” or “Congratulations on 10 years with ABC Company!”
4. Make communication easy
Communicating with your clients is the best way to get to know them. This can be really simple with the right broker tools and benefits technology. Streamlined and automated content opens more doors for communication more quickly. Getting the conversation started is half the battle -- from there you can get to know your customers like never before. We’re ready to help you get started, whether it be for National Get to Know Your Customers Day or any day. Contact us to get started.
