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They’re the ones who need to tell you how you’re doing.

How often do you talk to your customers? If your answer is, “When they call you,” it’s time to make some changes. You’re missing out on powerful opportunities to find out how your business can help them.

Here’s why it’s up to you, and not them. Unless your business is actually doing something wrong or bad, you’re not going to hear from customers. They’re as busy as you are. They don’t have time to call you and say, “Here’s a suggestion on how you can make more revenue from me.”                        

One call a day

An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Why’s that? Preventative actions. Eat healthy and you’ll stay healthy. Apply that to your business. Reaching out to just one customer every day allows you to take a reading of how they’re doing—but it also can be a barometer reading on how you’re doing.

It’s human nature. We all hesitate to reach out to customers. They’re going to complain about something. They’re going to tell us the things about our products and services that aren’t working for them. All we’ll hear is complaints.

Wouldn’t you rather hear about these complaints so you can fix them? After all you’re going to lose these customers if you don’t. Actively seeking out the pain points and frustrations of your customers is only unpleasant if you’re pig-headed enough to think that your company is perfect.

Look at it this way: If you never talk to your customers and get their feedback on how you’re doing, what are your benchmarks? How will you know if you’re improving?

Opportunities to be a hero

Oh, yes. It’s possible that you’ll get an earful when you contact a customer and ask how things are going. But, consider this: How long would it have been before you discovered the problem? Most likely it was when you didn’t get the contract renewed or the purchase of your product’s next upgrade.

You’re making a dangerous assumption if you assume that hearing no news from your customers is good news. A single call to one customer every day can help you take a proactive approach to customer service.

Your customers will be impressed. After all, it takes a lot of energy and courage to pick up the phone—or write an email—and complain. It’s the kind of energy that only gets expended when something’s really wrong. Which begs the question: Why were things allowed to reach the point of “really wrong”?

What you think they want, and what they actually want

Reaching out to your customers gives you the ability to do a crucial reality check. They’re not sitting still, and neither are you. But, is your next generation of products and services in sync with your customer base?

From a customer’s point of view, “How are we doing and what else do you want from us” is the same as hearing “I love you.” The fact that you’ve even bothered to be receptive to criticism puts you in a different league. The possibility that you’ll actually respond and make changes based on their comments can generate amazing customer loyalty. These customers can easily become your best promotors.

Staying in constant contact with customers help you learn about everyday problems that can indicate future opportunities to create an incremental improvement to your service. But you won’t know about these customer pain points or everyday problems if you don’t talk to them. You’ll miss out on opportunities to be a hero. You’ll make potential incorrect assumptions about what customers really want. You’ll do all this and more if you don’t make it a habit of connecting with at least one customer every day.

More would be better, but one is sufficient. Do the math.

Remove a couple weeks because yes, you do deserve a vacation. In a year’s time, reaching out to just one customer daily gives you 250 data points—and that’s only if you learn just one important thing from your contact with the customer. It’s likely, though, that you’ll learn more.

What happens when you connect all those dots? What can you determine from this influx of data from your customers? All it takes is picking up the phone, dialing a number, and saying, “Hey, got a couple minutes to talk? How are things going for you?”

Crewhu’s 1 click survey and employee engagement platform makes it easy to garner customer feedback and rewards your employees for providing exceptional service and staying in constant communication with your customers, from whom you can learn so much. Schedule a demo today to see how we can help make those customer conversations easier.