Client relations is an umbrella term that refers to how a company interacts with its customers while explaining its value proposition, making a sale, and providing support. Maintaining good client relations helps them get the most value out of your business and keep them coming back for more.

Client satisfaction is pivotal in increasing the customer’s lifetime value. Salesforce research confirms that 89% of buyers are more likely to make another purchase after a positive experience with a brand.

Repeat purchases from satisfied customers lead to a steady and predictable cash flow, which is crucial for small businesses to pay their overhead costs and keep their lights on. However, focusing on improving client relations with a small team that has a lot on its plate can be challenging.

In this article, let’s look at five tools that will help you maintain and improve client relationships while you focus on running your business.

1. vcita: CRM with self-service

The first step in managing client relationships is to keep all their data in one place. Previous purchases, behavior and interactions, marketing messages you sent, and offers they took advantage of are a few data points that will help you gauge your client’s satisfaction level.

Another method to keep your clients satisfied is by giving them the freedom to interact with your business in the way they want to. Whether it is about recent offers or booking an appointment, clients appreciate control in interacting with your business. Small businesses often struggle with this, though, because it requires multiple tools which need a lot of investment in terms of time and effort.

vcita solves this problem by providing a CRM tool, which comes pre-integrated with the platform’s own engines for SMS and email marketing, as well as a self-service portal, allowing small businesses to manage their schedules and client relations easily.

You can keep records of all kinds of client interactions in one place and empower your client through the self-service portal where they can ask you questions, inquire about offers, download files, share grievances, book appointments and pay invoices whenever they want to.

2. Mention: Brand monitoring

People talk. They talk about you, your competitors, and their experiences with both. Other people listen to their conversations and gather information, which helps them decide whether they should avail of your services.

In this sense, social media is an amplifier. If you are delivering a great service and your clients are happy, things will work out great. However, if one of your clients had a bad experience and word gets out, it can affect your reputation in the industry.

Monitoring the discussions and whispers on social media about you and your competitors is a time-consuming task for which it always takes the backseat with small businesses.

Mention is a social media monitoring tool that keeps an eye on all social media platforms and notifies you when you are the topic of discussion. This will allow you to improve client relations by resolving issues before they become crises.

3. Kangaroo: Loyalty rewards

Earlier in this post, we talked about how crucial it is for customers to keep returning to small businesses. One of the simplest ways you can incentivize repeat purchases from your existing clients is through loyalty programs.

Loyalty programs are marketing strategies that offer rewards, coupons, discounts, etc., to your existing clients, encouraging them to buy more from you. It involves tracking your clients’ behavior and sending them offers they are most likely to avail.

Kangaroo is a tool that helps you do all of the above. You can integrate Kangaroo with other tools in your workflow to make the data collection and insight generation process streamlined. You can finally pitch relevant offers to your clients which will not only save them money through personalization but also will bring them closer to your brand.

4. Woobox: Giveaways and surveys

Client engagement is an ongoing process that strengthens the bond between you and your customers that goes beyond a business transaction. It is intentional and happens with time which plays an important role in brand loyalty.

Companies resort to various tactics such as hosting contests and rewarding the winners, sending freebies to certain lucky customers through giveaways, etc., to engage with their clients. Apart from that, they interact with their customers via polls and surveys to learn more about their pain points and expectations to improve their service.

Woobox provides a solution that enables small teams to run different kinds of campaigns which will contribute to client engagement. You can host contests and giveaways on social media, create custom landing pages for polls and quizzes, and more to literally woo your customers back for more.

5. EmailOctopus: Drip campaigns

Drip campaigns allow you to send certain messages to your clients over a period of time, based on how they interact with your business. You can send these messages via any channel, but usually, they are sent via email as it is the most preferred channel.

You can segment your clients on the basis of various parameters such as their recent purchase, feedback, the pages they visited on your site, etc., and run separate drip campaigns on each cohort for maximum impact.

However, most email automation tools can be hard on the budgets of small businesses which can keep you from leveraging one of the most effective marketing strategies that maintain and improve client relations.

Fortunately, EmailOctopus provides a robust solution that comes within the budget of every small business. You can send 10,000 emails per month to up to 2500 subscribers for free. Apart from that, you can also create inline forms and landing pages to embed on your website.

Summing up

Maintaining and improving client relationships pulls your customers closer to your brand by forming a bond that goes beyond one-time business transactions. It increases their trust in you, encourages them to buy more, and turns them into your raving fans.

Small businesses often struggle with it due to limited resources. However, with the five tools mentioned above, you can gain an advantage over your competitors and nurture strong client relations that drive growth.