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For startup businesses, it is instrumental to get a dynamic and responsive customer service setup right from the beginning. Customer Service is at the core of developing a strong relationship between a business and its customers. Therefore, customer service is essential for any business which wants to create a loyal following of customers, and pull back the ones drifting away to competitors. According to research conducted by the consulting giant, Price Waterhouse Coopers, over half of Global CEOs believe that growing their customer base is a top 3 investment priority.

Here are a few steps that Startups can follow to ensure a robust relationship with customers.

Don’t Just Rely on Email

Most startups that I know of, are not satisfied with the typical ‘support@companyname’ email they have created. They believe that corresponding over an email takes too much time, and makes way for a lot of variables such as, if/when the other person will respond to the query, and whether that person will be the right person to do so.

Startups need to deploy multiple communication channels to enable customers to get in touch with them and show flexibility in order to build better relationships. They have to focus on delivering personalized customer service in order to create that list of followers which they can rely on in the future.

Focus on Customer Needs & Proactive Communication

Ignoring customer needs and late responses can prove to be a disaster for businesses especially startups. Research conducted by a market research firm Harris Interactive states that customers are likely to retaliate against the business if their customer service needs are not met. Customers aged between 18 and 30 are highly likely to vent on social media and damage the company’s corporate reputation.

Customers essentially want personalized responses from companies so get all your staff members involved and train them to proactively respond to customer queries and concerns. Understanding customer needs and communicating with them actively should be the focus of your staff training. Your team should know that a customer always comes first and facilitating him/her is crucial for the success of a new business.

Don’t Underestimate the Power of Feedback

In order to measure the quality and level of products and services being offered, there is hardly a better way for startups to find out how well they are doing than getting ample feedback from existing customers. Gathering feedback is essential to improve the quality of products and customer experience being offered. This results in an increase in the level of customer satisfaction and drives sales.

Customer feedback is also a great way for companies to gather data on customers, and segment them according to different demographics. It can also help startups to identify trends according to consumer behavior and use these trends to create different marketing and promotional strategies. For example, if a company finds out that although they are targeting people in a whole city, yet most of their online visitors are from a certain area, they can then start to specifically target that area to satisfy customer needs and generate more revenue.