In the myriad of ways we consume content and products and information and abundance these days, it’s no surprise that the marketplace is a tough place for businesses.
With a superhuman informational highway blazing toward your consumers every second of the day, how does a business stand out? What are businesses to do when thousands of their competitors are at the touch of a fingerprint in a tiny computer that goes with their favorite customers everywhere every day?
We have to love our customers. I mean, really love them. I know this idea is not new. We may have annual or even monthly meetings about “how to give the customer the best experience,” or “win the customer over with these five simple tips,” or “for the love of everything sweet, please raise your sales quota, or we’re all going down!” But what it truly means to love our customers is, as much as it is up to us, to be good to the people we are serving.
A competitive edge in a world of numbers will always look like how we treat people. The businesses that make it known that every product, service, data point, or plastic trinket we sell goes to real people looking to us to improve their quality of life. Caring for our customers is not only our duty – but our differentiator.
Whether that looks like modernizing a product to make it more useful, the additional time we spend on needs assessments, the 5-point quality control process we adopt, something as small as a handwritten letter or as large as taking on a global cause affecting our customers – the longevity is in the love we give.
The next time we attempt to play in a larger market where our competitor’s budget can only be described as “Are you kidding me?”, tap into an expanded consumer base, or finally see an upswing in customer retention after a difficult quarter, let’s remember: the oldest, most tried and true trick in the business book – is empathy.
