Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their very own.
The digital world is obsessive about trends. Trending videos, sounds, images, backgrounds — you name it. Trends change overnight and unexpectedly; act quickly or you may be left in the dust by the algorithm.
As much as capitalizing on a successful trend can lift your corporation, many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) would profit from shifting their attention from Hail Marys to the fundamentals of business constructing. These are principles that regardless of the social media platform, algorithm or brand, don’t exit of favor. They were here yesterday, they usually’ll be much more precious tomorrow.
Let’s dive into just a few of the fundamentals that may profit every SMB in 2024.
Related: The 5 Fundamentals for Growing Your Startup
1. Responsiveness(*3*)
All of us have that friend who leaves us on “read” for days at a time. We may act prefer it doesn’t hurt our feelings or impact our relationship, but it surely does.
It’s no different in business. Responsiveness to your customers shows respect and prioritization to them. By responding quickly to their needs, you allow them to know that they can be taken care of and that their problem is your problem. This can naturally profit retention.
“One in all our company core values is “radically serve others” and all of our customer-facing teams truly take this to heart. That is greater than evident after we review our weekly metrics and see our average customer response time low and customer satisfaction rating high every week,” shares Jerry Tsai, President of Acceptd.
Make this an organization value by putting metrics around response time. This may include how quickly your team responds to emails, customer support requests or phone calls.
2. Be an individual(*3*)
Hard to imagine this qualifies as advice in 2024, but with all the things digital, automated and AI-powered, you will find customers are, most of the time, sick of talking to a robot — and even worse, a customer support rep with the personality of 1.
Last 12 months while working in operations for a startup, I handled customer support requests for a couple of month. My responses were quick and never overly formal, clearly written by a human being. You’d have thought I used to be curing the world from all its pains based on the feedback I received from people.
I also found it interesting that individuals were way more respectful and reasonable, provided that it didn’t feel like they were talking to a customer support representative as much as they were a one who was here to help them.
Teach your team that, as much as professionalism matters, so does coming across as an actual one who wants to help people. Measure the success of your customer support interactions with a survey to understand how one approach to engagement is perhaps higher than one other.
In fact, this advice does include caveats. Being personable doesn’t cover unprofessional, inappropriate or unhelpful support.
Related: 5 Ways to Show Your Customers You Understand Them in a Digital-First World
3. Follow up(*3*)
We’re at all times in search of the following smartest thing. And with that comes forgetting about leads or prospects that fell through the cracks. In case you’re not systematically following up with prospects, you are losing business.
“Individuals are doing more research than ever and sooner than ever, meaning they won’t be ready to move forward once they initially reach out. We found that ⅓ of our leads weren’t converting for two+ months after their first inquiry. That shows the ability of following up even months after their first contact,” says Oakwood Management CEO Keith Jones.
If your corporation is digital-first, extend your automated email sequence one other month or two. If your corporation is lead-generation, this implies establishing reminders to call and email prospects until you already know they don’t seem to be in the marketplace for your service anymore.
“Prospects often have many alternative priorities, and knowing that you just care enough to check in with them recurrently goes a great distance in establishing trust,” adds Sriharsha Guduguntla, Hyperbound CEO.
Trust is developed over time — one reason why following up weeks or months down the road may be such a high-value investment. It shows prospects you’re diligent and process-oriented. Bonus points when you can personalize your outreach as much as possible in order that they know you care and remember their specific circumstance.
Related: 4 Insane Truths About Failing to Follow-up
The following tips won’t take your corporation to the moon or assist you go viral. They don’t seem to be talked about on social media by influencers or business gurus. They’ve been lost in a sea of distractions and trends that pop up sooner or later and disappear the following. That is the most important good thing about following the following tips. They’re so rare that you just immediately distinguish yourself out of your competitors by getting the fundamentals right.
Do the fundamentals at a high level for long enough, and you will see the outcomes compound through higher retention, higher conversion rates, more word of mouth and a stronger business foundation.
From there, you will find you might not even need to chase the most recent trends to achieve success. Simply specializing in serving your customers is exclusive enough to achieve success.