You can’t learn much of anything with your mouth open. These days more and more companies are turning their attention to use active listening for social commerce business. Meaning? The simple meaning is they believe that they need more attention to building customer relationships.
Check out our thoughts on customer focus.
A secret to achieving success? No, not really. Social commerce? Is your business a social commerce? If your answer is no, think again. It’s not rocket science. What makes a social commerce business? Why putting emphasis on being social, of course.
From customer relationships comes trust, the most important factor in a customer selecting a company with whom to do business. The secret to building customer relationships is customer engagement and there are many ways you’ll need to engage customers.
Consider: Saying no saves you time in the future. Saying yes costs you time in the future. No is like a time credit. You can spend that block of time in the future. Yes is like a time debt. You have to repay that commitment at some point. No is a decision. Yes is a responsibility.
Want to see some great tips on how to build customer relationships?
Whether we are discussing businesses that are social, the best at engaging customers, or being great at a social commerce business, there are few businesses in the class of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream. (We define social commerce as commerce that uses online media to support social interaction to assist in online buying and selling).
What is active or focused listening?
Focused listening is the art of discovering valuable customer insights. Remember that the real value is what we hear, not what we say. A very important concept for marketers that is often difficult to learn.
Related: Complaints Are Sources of Remarkable Customer Retention Strategies
Marketing mistakes
There are four critical mistakes to avoid in focused listening:
Not just listening to what is said about your brand.
Just focusing on past performance. You need to derive insights into future consumer directions
Not selective hearing, but active listening across the board.
Don’t ignore the importance of questions. Remember we sometimes are not sure what we are looking for.
Strategic listening action
Starts with showing appreciation
… for customers.
Who and how
… do you engage? Carefully select your targets for the community you want to build.
What are the barriers
… preventing optimal consumer engagement?
Interactive customer engagement
… is a high priority for any brand and they continually look for new ways to collect inputs from customers. A good current example is Ben and Jerry’s ‘Scoop Truck’, which travels around the country giving out free samples of new products and soliciting customer inputs.
Look beyond
… how customers have interacted with you in the past. Test new ideas.
Customer Retention … 9 Ways Complaints Yield Remarkable Strategies
Understand the broader lives
… of your community.
Use customer collaboration
… to obtain customer ideas. Fans inspire lots of new ideas if you just ask them their opinions.
Use the insights
… to continually update your ideal customer persona.
Use active listening … a great example
We like to discuss the importance of employees’ attitude on the success of any business, particularly those that engage with the public to a great extent. Here is a story about a nursery in our region. It is a story we like to tell because it contains some simple secrets to employee and customer engagement and the success of running a social commerce business.
A nursery gardener ran a business that had been in the family for two generations. The staff was happy, and customers loved to visit the store, or to have the staff work on their gardens or make deliveries – anything from bedding plants to young trees.
For as long as anyone could remember, the current and previous owners were extremely positive happy people.
Most folks assumed it was because they ran a successful business.
In fact, it was the other way around…
A tradition in the business was that the owner always wore a big lapel badge, saying Business Is Great!
The business was indeed generally great, although it went through tough times like any other company. What never changed, however, was the owner’s positive attitude, and the badge saying Business Is Great!
Everyone who saw the badge for the first time invariably asked, “What’s so great about business?” Sometimes people would also comment that their own business was miserable, or even that they personally were miserable or stressed.
Anyhow, the Business Is Great! badge always tended to start a conversation, which typically involved the owner talking about lots of positive aspects of business and work, for example:
The pleasure of meeting and talking with different people every day
Reward that comes from helping staff take on new challenges and experiences
Fun and laughter in a relaxed and healthy work environment
The fascination in the work itself, and in the other people’s work and businesses
Great feeling when you finish a job and do it to the best of your capabilities
New things you learn every day – even without looking to do so
The bottom line
It’s all about wearing and expressing your enthusiasm and passion all the time, isn’t it? That is a true priority of running a social business.
Companies that are proactively managing all elements of being social to improve their customer experiences are most successful in achieving customer trust and loyalty.
The biggest mistake people make when it comes to listening is they’re so focused on what they’re going to say next or how what the other person is saying is going to affect them that they fail to hear what’s being said. The words come through loud and clear, but the meaning is lost.
A simple way to avoid this is to ask a lot of questions. People like to know you’re listening, and something as simple as a clarification question shows that not only are you listening, you also care about what they’re saying. You’ll be surprised how much respect and appreciation you gain just by asking questions.
Remember, customers, create the most value for you … when you create the most value for them.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of word of mouth marketing. And put it to good use.
It’s up to you to keep improving your creative marketing efforts. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
Check out these additional articles on customer insights from our library:
The Story of How JetBlue Turns Customers into Advocates
Should a Business Send Customers to Competitors?
An Actionable Approach to Target Market Segmentation
Complaints Are Sources of Remarkable Customer Retention Strategies
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