A customer emails your company. “OMG!” the customer writes before characterizing your product or service as perfection and proclaiming they’ll be back for more.
Make sure you treasure customers such as this for future sales. Don’t limit your success by only sending a simple thank you email. Here are six steps to begin to empower your public relations and social media efforts with this type of customer feedback.
- Show customers some love by sending “thank you” samples of your product or discounts on future service. This helps ensure people remain repeat customers in the future. Repeat customers are more likely to refer others. Sending samples also shows you care about customers’ feedback and offers your company a chance to chat with the customer.
- In a note with the samples or discount, ask customers to spread the word and Like your social media accounts.
- After customers receive your tokens of appreciation, someone should follow up and learn if opportunities exist for brand storytelling, part of PR and marketing. You can use authentic stories from customers for blogs and repurpose them for social media and the company newsletter.
- Should you immediately post positive comments from customers without using their last names on social media? You could but authenticity is important. We suggest first asking customers if posts may include their full names and towns. This way, posts might hold more weight with audiences. Also, if customers later follow the company’s social media accounts and see their own quotes, they might appreciate the fact that companies took the time and provided the courtesy of letting them know ahead of time about using their words.
- We recommend taking this slowly, one step at a time to avoid overwhelming customers like some car salespeople swoop in on prospective buyers entering their parking lots.
- Also, we suggest the same person keep in contact with customers to help build strong relationships. Too many points of contact can create confusion, conflicting messages and end up annoying.
The ways to move forward with happy customers are countless. But companies must recognize these types of opportunities and take steps to make the most of them. Your short-term response could evolve into a long-term, profitable customer relationship.
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