How To Make Yourself A Darling Of Your Clients By Leveraging The Power Of Mindfulness

In a previous article – How Mastering Mindfulness Can Make You A Darling Of Your Boss (And Probably Get You A Promotion), I discussed the different ways you can use mindfulness to boost productivity in the workplace. In this article, I will teach you how to harness the power of mindfulness to gain your customers’ love. If your customers love you, you can bet that growing your business will be easy.

First, let me mention that the age-old adage, “The customer is always right” is correct. Although customers may be on the wrong at times, customers being wrong does not happen that often.

To grow your business, you need to focus on ensuring the satisfaction of your customers. After all, they are your biggest asset.

Contrary to popular belief, a heightened sense of mindfulness does more than make you peaceful and focused. If you use mindfulness the right way, it can also strengthen your bond with your customers.

That’s what I’d like to share with you today: mindfulness strategies I have used to improve my relationship with customers. You can use these to make yourself a darling of your customers.

Worth mentioning is that these are the strategies that have worked for me. They may or may not work for you, but you won’t know until you start experimenting:

#: Be aware of your customers’ needs and wants

Your customers will appreciate you more if you give them the best value for their time or money. Why should your target market choose your products over those of your competitors? What is that unique value that you are offering them that they cannot find elsewhere? Why should your customers pay you more for your services?

If you aren’t aware of your customers’ exact needs and wants, and what they expect from your business, start doing that now. Start by asking yourself these questions —and others like them. In so doing, you can figure out what you offer your customers in exchange for their time and money.

Your customers look forward to getting a particular value from your business. When you fail to offer them that value, naturally, they’ll feel cheated. This will make it easier for them to gravitate towards your competitors.

Here’s how to use mindfulness principles to clarify your value offering to make sure you’re serving your customers well:

• Use mindfulness to reflect on your core values, vision, and product offerings. Don’t stop there; relate that to how they add value to your customers’ lives.
• Create and conduct an in-depth survey geared towards letting you know what your customers expect from your business. This will help you to gain more insight. This is what mindfulness is about. The survey will also give you insights on what your customers hope for in the future. You could run online surveys using your social media channels and website. You could also use telemarketing for this purpose.
• Compare the findings you get from the survey with what you believe the customers expect. You are likely to find gaps between what the customer expects of you and what you thought the customer expects of you. Becoming aware of this gap helps you figure out what’s missing. This makes it possible for you to work towards bridging the gap between your customers’ expectations and your offerings.

Resolving this very gap allows you to provide your customers with more or less what they want. By giving customers the value they want and deserve, they value your business and its role in their lives.

#: Welcome and value your customers’ feedback

Human beings have an innate need to feel heard; your customers want the same. Failing to ask customers for feedback may explain why you have poor customer relations. The same thing happens if you do not address the issues raised by customers who give their feedback.

To become a darling of your customers, it would be best if you also become more mindful of your customers’ concerns. Make sure to welcome their feedback, and value it by implementing their best suggestions.

The next step is to learn how to find out what your customers have to say about your work.

Here are various ways to do that:

• After using your service or purchasing your products, send your clients thank you emails or feedback cards.
• Put up ‘feedback’ and ‘suggestion’ related posts on your social media channels. Don’t stop there; actively invite your customers to comment with their input.
• When a customer gives feedback, even if it critical, accept it respectfully and appreciate it. Mindfully reflect on the feedback, and if the criticism is valid, use it wisely to improve your product offerings. Once you resolve the issue raised, reach out to the aggrieved customer. Let him/her know how much his/her feedback helped you improve. Doing this will leave that particular customer feeling relieved. This will encourage him/her to let go of the bitter experience and give your business another chance.
• Ask your customers about improvements they would like you to make in your work/product, and implement it conscientiously.

By mindfully welcoming your customers’ input, considering it, and possibly, implementing it, you become their darling.

#: Acknowledge your customers

Mindfulness is about living in the moment with complete awareness and acceptance. Being unaware of the importance of your customers goes against the principles of mindfulness.

You need to acknowledge and appreciate your customers as often as you can. In so doing, you make them heard, loved, and valued. When you do that with complete awareness, you make them feel significant. Ultimately, this makes you a darling in their hearts and minds.

Here’s how you can do that:

• Every few weeks, publish customer appreciation posts on your official social media accounts and website (or blog).
• Send shout-outs to individual customers to make them feel special.
• Every few months, run giveaway campaigns. Make sure you offer a prize that fulfills your customers’ needs. Let’s assume that you run a digital marketing agency. Let’s assume most of your clients are home-based businesses affected grievously by the COVID-19 pandemic. You could run a giveaway campaign that gives discounts or free social media marketing to one or two clients.
• Record your customers’ details, such as birthdays, religion, ethnicities, etc. Use this information to send them season’s greetings, birthday wishes and greetings related to their holy festivals.

These ideas are simple, yes, but they leave quite an impact on your customers’ minds, making you their go-to business.

#: Infuse empathy into your work

An essential aspect of mindfulness in business and marketing is to use empathy to promote your work. Imagine yourself in your customers’ shoes and then use that knowledge to provide them with the right value. Doing this helps you create authentic offerings characterized by a level of empathy. This ultimately touches a cord in your customers’ hearts.

As I mentioned earlier, these mindfulness-based strategies are what have worked for me. The only way to know if they will work for you is to experiment. You never know, one of them may prove to be the linchpin that helps you create lifelong brand ambassadors.

Do you use mindfulness principles in your business? Is there a mindfulness-based strategy you’ve been using, but that I didn’t mention? You can share it, and your comments about the strategy I’ve shared in today’s post, in the comments sections.

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