Appreciating Your Customers

Appreciation is a two-way street for both companies and customers. Customers hopefully appreciate the products they’re buying and the business should appreciate its customers. After all, you wouldn’t have a business if it weren’t for the customers. Sounds like a healthy relationship with a nice balance of give and take. But, that’s not always the case. Sometimes customers feel buried under promotional emails, flyers, letters, or phone calls. That’s because some companies can be so focused on acquiring new customers, that they sometimes forget to take a step back and say, “thank you” to the ones that are already loyal to them.Customer appreciation in any company is important. Companies who value their customers will reap the benefits with not only loyal, returning customers, but as well as increased word of mouth that could lead to new customers. According to data from the U.S. Small Business Administration, 68% of customers leave a business because they believe the business does not care about them. It has nothing to do with your products! But, if you show genuine care and interest in your customers, they’ll show it right back to you! Fun story: in 2013 Pizza Hut made a bold move for Valentine’s Day. They offered customers a Pizza Hut fragranced perfume along with a $20 gift card. Plus they guaranteed it would be delivered by the 14^th of February. With this “act of love”, Pizza Hut showed their appreciation for their customers with no money going back into their own pockets!

By coming up with a customer appreciation strategy you will most likely see better reviews and feedback about your company. This can be so beneficial because potential customers will read the reviews others have left. These reviews will help them decide if your business is a place worth spending their money. You will also increase your customer loyalty, keeping your customers coming back time and time again. To put it into more personal terms, if your friend remembered your birthday and got you a present, wouldn’t you refer to them as loyal? You would feel appreciated because they went out of their way do to something nice for you. This will likely lead to you two being friends for a while!

What can you do for your customers? First, take a step back and evaluate your own experiences: What company makes you personally feel valued, and why, or how? Then, incorporate the things you like about other companies into your own, and get creative! Different customer appreciation strategies will work better for different businesses.

At ImOn Communications, we’d compare ourselves to that birthday party throwing friend. For the past eight years, we’ve thrown a customer appreciation carnival for all of our 17,000+ current customers. It is a two hour carnival with hot dogs, ice-cream, rides, games, prizes and entertainment. That’s two hours where we celebrate our customers and their business with us! The customer appreciation carnival also gives our ImOn employees a chance to talk, and connect, with the people they serve. Seeing the CEO running a game and getting to chat with her adds a nice personalized feel for our company. All in all, we do this day for our customers because we genuinely appreciate them.

If you’re a current ImOn customer, we look forward to seeing you on August 18^th from 2-4pm at Ushers Ferry Historic Village in Cedar Rapids. This day is for you guys!

We would also love to hear about your companies’ customer appreciation ideas, or things other businesses have done for you that made you feel appreciated.  Just add a comment.