Tips to help you build and maintain customer relationships

Strong customer relationships are essential to your small business.

Whether you are starting out or are an established business, maintaining positive relationships with your customers creates loyalty and encourages them to return and purchase from your business again.

To celebrate World Entrepreneur’s Day on 21 August, we share the top tips from South Australia’s Innovation Leaders Network for building and maintaining customer relationships to drive growth and increase profitability in your small business.

Top tips on business acumen and customer acquisition:

• Unlock the power of your first customers and use them as ambassadors – they can help spread the word about your product or service.
• “Old school” customer service is still important in deeply understanding your customers and forging real relationships.
• Utilise new technologies like artificial intelligence and augmented reality to boost your customer service – digital tools can help deliver high-quality customer service, and quickly.

Top tipson building and maintaining productive relationships:

• Build a robust customer profile – keep track of your customer’s feedback as relationships mature.
• Winning and retaining customers – build relationships where they will stick with your journey, from a minimum viable product to a fit-for-purpose solution. Experiment without fear, but with honesty.
• Despite our digital age, never underestimate the power of a face-to-face meeting.

If you’d like to learn more about the Innovation Leaders Network, visit the Department of State Development.