If you want your business to stand out from the crowd or your excellent customer service to be remembered, (for all the right reasons of course) there are three simple steps to follow.

1. Get to know your client’s individual needs
Going the extra mile is all well and good, but it’s a fruitless effort if you’re going out of your way to excel in an area that doesn’t add value to your client’s experience.

Spend the time it takes to get to know your customers individually and identify their hidden values. For an example, if your a designer then you won’t waste time creating designs for a client who has an in house designer, or deliver a job for a client who doesn’t want the end user (their customer) to know who you are.

2. Help them break out of the box
Instead, find out where your clients’ difficulties lay and put the effort into helping them overcome them. Every business owner can get bogged down in the details of day to day running, but as an outsider you can offer a new perspective.

Spend some informal time with your customers just chatting to them about their issues, and put your creativity to work for their benefit. Offer suggestions on new ways of doing things that go beyond your own product or service offering. Whether it’s white labeling those delivered items to save your customer postage and allow them to offer a shorter lead time, spotting bottlenecks in their work processes and coming up with a way to iron them out, or pointing your customer to another service that will help them grow, give your creative ideas freely. After all, you want your customer’s businesses to thrive and grow so they can keep coming back to you.

3. Don’t let them forget how you helped
Check up on how your ideas were received and whether they’ve helped your customer. If not, keep offering new suggestions. Some clients may be reticent to take outside input at first, but if you keep giving ideas, eventually one will stick.

You might want to request a formal feedback session once or twice a year to find out where you’re doing well and where you could improve. Such a session is the ideal time to remind your client of all the ways you’ve helped them, preferably in the search for other issues you can help them with.

Don’t be surprised when this approach leads to reciprocal suggestions from your clients for ways to grow your own business, and remember to take them on board. Not every idea will pan out, but when you’re sharing creative input with your clients and suppliers, you’re not only building each other’s businesses and building personal relationships, you’re cementing your position as a trusted advisor.

Get to know your customer’s hidden values, and over deliver on them. Go the extra mile by sharing creative ideas, and build relationships that allow you to remind your client how much value to add to their business. In a way without the cliche, you care about their business, your are putting them first as you want then to succeed. This way your customers are won’t easily forget you, or go to the competition, in a hurry.

Dean Williams

Dean Williams is a design and marketing blogger working for Print-Print Limited, promoting business and building brands through quality print marketing. If you’re interested in small business promotion then please get in touch hello@print-print.co.uk