Being closer to customers is imperative for any business and becomes obligatory during this economic slump. During this tough time, finding new customers for your business is quite tough and expensive whereas it takes less effort and is economical to retain your existing customers. Moreover, it is easier to sell additional products to existing clients than to search for the new ones, in this downturn.

Here are some tips that you can undergo to retain customers and beat this recession:

Arrange Regular Personal Meetings: Personal meetings with customers show them that you are interested in their business. With this you will get an opportunity to see things with the customers’ point of view, and enables you to deal with the issues before any problem arises. You can make it simple by putting your email id on website so that customers can contact you directly.

Request an Opinion: Asking customers for their feedback, convinces them to consider that you are always keen to find out what are their expectations. Use of questions like ‘How can we improve our services?’, ‘Could we do better to meet the service standards you expect from us?’ etc. shows to customers that you value their suggestions and take care of their concerns by doing what’s needed, required and important.

Treat them in a Different Way: Your customers value their relationships with you. They are more likely to respond positively to efforts to improve that relationship. They deserve to be treated differently. Out deliver your promises to customers, and they will be delighted to come back for more business from you.

Perform an Inside Job: One quick and effective way to find out what your customers are thinking is to ask your employees as they already have (or should have) relationships with customers so it should be easy. Make it part of their job. Guide and encourage them to have conversations with customers that result in your company knowing more about your customers’ expectations.

Go For an In-Depth Study: Consider going into greater depth with focusing a few representative customers instead of surveying a wide range of customers. Learning the changing habits of your core customers is a better use of resources than focusing on new customers in this economic depression.

“Recession is a difficult time for every business, but don’t allow it to be a time of complete failure.”