Customer focus – a greater imperative than ever

Two recent surveys have highlighted the extent to which the downturn has brought customer focus to the top of agenda for business owners.

A survey by Bibby Financial Services found that almost two thirds of UK business owners continue to worry about losing customers, with half now focused on building better relationships with existing customers rather than searching out new revenue streams.

Another survey by Cisco UK revealed five strategies SMEs regard as essential for both customer retention and customer acquisition in the new economic climate:

1. Focus on improving customer service
2. Maintain a flexible business model and be ready to adapt to improve customer relations
3. Implement e-commerce – increasingly regarded by customers as improving the quality of customer service
4. Adopt technology where possible to help streamline and improve customer experience
5. Take full advantage of the opportunities presented by social media – a massive online marketplace that is still in its infancy and yet is yielding significant results for savvy businesses.

Like this post? You might also like our note on Poor financial management being your downfall.

Tags: Customer retention, Customer service, Social media

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 9th, 2010 at 10:37 am by Paul Beare and is filed under UK accounting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.