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Writer's pictureSME CofE

The Importance of Customer Relations in a Smaller Business




The identity of your business is one of the most important foundations to building a larger customer base. If your business identity becomes one that is clear and attractive to customers, it should automatically lead into value, as customers knowing what they are purchasing and consuming facilitates a repeating response, called loyalty.

Building a personal relationship with these customers that establishes the reliability and friendliness of the service you provide only entices them to return again, and hopefully in turn adds an affect of them spreading word of their pleasant experience. While this takes form in many instances, such as testimonials or simply talking to other potential consumers, maintaining these relations is the way to create a sustainable advantage and defence over your competitors.


To build these relations, your company should look at buyers as real humans, people with needs, wants and struggles, and facilitate towards this. For example a successful sole trader should offer a friendly, welcoming, and inviting service, to differentiate them from others in the same market. A returning customer who has clearly had a troubling experience should expect an over-saturating response from your team, an added bonus to their product that larger corporations no longer provide, giving a reason to return.

A comfortable consumer is also more likely to give feedback on their provided services, creating an opportunity for innovation and development, embracing what your current market is really looking for. So much so that potentially successful new products and ideas could be invented, or at least be given an idea into where current R&D should be invested, leading to business growth and expanse.

“Build a loyalty platform with clear consumer benefits, and layer in customer-generated content to help build a community. With a great voice of the customer (VOC) strategy–including questions and answers, ratings and reviews, and visual content–your customers will feel right at home consuming and adding their own voice to your community.”

Eric Taylor • Director of Product Management, TurnTo Networks

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