What makes you special?

The two extremes: product commodity on the one hand and customer-focused businesses on the other will produce the losers and winners of tomorrow. You can create a special place for your business by aligning your business strategy with your customers’ increasingly sophisticated expectations. But it’s not just a question of marketing and positioning your business, your brand – that is the only the first step. What makes for long-term relationships is the way you interact with your customers at every point of the way. Rather than customers, treat them like valued friends.

Turn your customers into your champions! Your future success and continued profitability lies in making your customers come back and back again, happy with your products and services to the point that they talk about you. In other words, make them your advocates, your champions. Pick up the gauntlet and create the perfect experience for your customers, at the right time, in the right way, for the right price.

Don’t have the time?

Use the latest technology to increase your and your staff’s productivity, thus giving you the extra time needed for the task of making your customers happy. Because - just to complicate matters - customers, just like all of us, are emotional creatures, and emotional factors always have to be taken into account. Especially when it comes to buying travel, emotions play an important part in the decision making process. The key to being successful ‘psychologists’ and delight your customers is taking the time first to listen and then to respond to your customers’ needs and expectations.

Your customers - your most effective sales team

Therefore, if delighting your customers becomes your motto, and you make it easier for yourself and your staff to act on it, your customers will always come back for their next travel-buying experience. Nobody really wants to lose time by shopping around. Repeatedly satisfied customers tend to trust you, spend more and normally remain customers for a relatively long period of time, happily sharing their ‘discovery’ with family, friends and business partners.

Not easy but well worth it!

It’s definitely a challenge – this is no task for the faint-hearted. However, in this increasingly impersonal world, personal service is often almost more appreciated than price, and this definitely is an opportunity for you to offer your customers a superior buying experience, your specific expertise going hand-in-hand with listening to your customers and understanding their emotions. Many people can sell travel, but only you will listen. That’s differentiation at its best! What makes you special?