3 Lessons in Building Great Relationship with Customers

When you deal with customers in your organization, you can either comply to contractual terms and deliver what is expected. Or you can go a step forward to assess opportunities to add differentiated value (Remember 102%?). When I refer to customer here, it could be an external customer or an internal one (people within your organization to whom you provide your service).

From my recent experiences, I would like to share  3 most important aspects of building great relationships with your customers:

• Don’t just understand customer’s needs, understand their business: Do you know why a customer wants us to build this software/product/service? How does it fit into the larger picture of customer’s business? How does it generate money for customer? These are important questions for understanding the context. When you serve your customer, you are helping them address at least one of their business objectives. Understanding what works for the customer helps you align your actions to the business objectives. That is a sure way to add value, because customer no longer looks at you as a ‘vendor’ but as a ‘partner’. Most folks in technical areas need to understand this critically.
• Communicating one-on-one, frequently: Great relationships are built one conversation at a time. Open and transparent conversations are opportunities – to understand and to convey. Iterations of understanding and conveying the right things results in a credible relationship. In an outsourced world, I cannot emphasize more on value of ‘face-time’ with customers. Most customers will not open up when they talk over Skype or a phone. Frequently visiting your customer and understanding changes in their business helps. Emails, newsletters, sharing updates, blog are great tools to ensure continuous communication.
• Ship Results: All said and done, it all boils down to results. Great results delivered consistently over a period of time is the best strategy to build a strong relationship. Results build long lasting credibility. When you have deeper understanding of client’s ‘business’ and when you have ‘communicated’ frequently to manage expectations, you are in a much better position to deliver meaningful results that delights the customer. Key is to manage expectations, give realistic promises and delivering on them.

You cannot undermine the importance of relationship with your customers and how it directly impacts the quality of overall experience. Especially for folks in sales, if they focus first on being valued by the customer and build a relationship, sales happens as a by-product. The foundation for good engagement is built by bricks of value and cement of trust.

Power question: What are you doing today to develop great relationships with your customers?