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The digital world is obsessed with trends. Videos, sounds, images, trendy wallpapers – you choose. Trends change overnight and without warning; act quickly or you will be left in the dust by the algorithm.
As much as leveraging a successful trend can grow your business, many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) would benefit from shifting their focus from Hail Marys to the basics of business building. These are principles that, regardless of social media platform, algorithm, or brand, never go out of style. They were here yesterday and tomorrow they will be even more precious.
Let’s look at some basics that will benefit all SMEs in 2024.
Related: The 5 fundamentals to grow your startup
1. Responsiveness
We all have that friend who lets us “read” for days on end. We may act as if he doesn’t hurt our feelings or affect our relationship, but he doesn’t.
It’s no different in business. Responsiveness to your customers shows respect and priority towards them. By responding quickly to their needs, you will let them know that they will be taken care of and that their problem is your problem. This will naturally benefit loyalty.
“One of our company’s core values is ‘radically serving others,’ and all of our customer-facing teams really take this to heart. This is more than evident when we look at our weekly metrics and see that our average turnaround time customer response and customer satisfaction levels are low and high every week,” shares Jerry Tsai, president of Accepted.
Make it a business value by including response time metrics. This may include how quickly your team responds to emails, customer service requests, or phone calls.
2. Be a person
Hard to believe this would be considered advice in 2024, but with everything digital, automated and powered by AI, you’ll find that customers are, more often than not, fed up with talking to a robot – or, worse yet , with a customer service representative with the personality of one.
Last year, while working in operations for a startup, I handled customer service requests for about a month. My responses were quick and not overly formal, clearly written by a human being. You would have thought I was curing the world of all its pain based on the feedback I received from people.
I also found it interesting that people were much more respectful and reasonable, as they didn’t feel like they were talking to a customer service representative as much as a person who was there to help them.
Teach your team that as much as professionalism is important, so is presenting yourself as a real person who wants to help people. Measure the success of customer service interactions with a survey to understand how one engagement method might be better than another.
Of course, this recommendation comes with caveats. Being nice doesn’t cover unprofessional, inappropriate, or unhelpful support.
Related: 5 Ways to Show Your Customers You Understand Them in a Digital World
3. Follow up
We always look for the best thing. And with that you forget about the leads or prospects that have fallen by the wayside. If you don’t systematically follow up with prospects, you’re losing business.
“People are searching more than ever before, which means they may not be ready to move forward when they initially contact us. We found that ⅓ of our leads weren’t converting for more than 2 months after their first inquiry This demonstrates the power of following up even months after initial contact,” says Keith Jones, CEO of Oakwood Management.
If your business is digital, extend your automated email sequence another month or two. If your business is lead generation, that means setting reminders to call and email prospects until you know they’re no longer in the market for your service.
“Prospects often have many different priorities, and knowing that you care enough to check in with them regularly goes a long way in establishing trust,” adds Sriharsha Guduguntla, CEO of Hyperbound.
Trust develops over time – one reason why following weeks or months down the road can be such a high-value investment. Show potential clients that you are diligent and process-oriented. Bonus points if you can personalize your contact as much as possible so they know you care and remember their specific circumstance.
Related: 4 crazy truths about not following up
These tips won’t take your business to the moon or help you go viral. It’s not talked about on social media by influencers or business gurus. They are lost in a sea of distractions and trends that appear one day and disappear the next. This is the biggest advantage of following these tips. They are so rare that you immediately stand out from your competitors by getting the basics right.
Do the basics at a high level for long enough and you’ll see results increase through greater retention, better conversion rates, more word of mouth, and a stronger business foundation.
From there you’ll find that you may not even need to chase the latest trends to be successful. Simply focusing on serving your customers is unique enough to achieve success.