8 Ways To Connect Your Small Business with Customers (2024)

After a customer purchases one of your products, the next question is whether they’ll buy from your business again. It might all depend on how good your relationship is with that specific customer. Did they like your product’s quality and features? Did you respond promptly to their questions? If not, they might have left with a sour taste in their mouth.

But if you build up a strong rapport with your customers, you’re on the way to brand loyalty, referrals, and increased profits. In fact, studies have found that loyal customers who make repeat purchases spend as much as 67% more than new customers.

So how do you build customer connections? Let’s explore what customer connection is and what it can mean for your business—with expert advice from Erika Geraerts, founder of the make-up and beauty brand Fluff.

What is customer connection?

Customer connection describes the emotional relationship between a brand or business and its customers. It’s about how customers feel when they interact with your brand on social media platforms or when they go to purchase a product on your website. This tie reflects your customer’s past interactions with your company and can be the difference between them making another purchase or going elsewhere.

Building a strong customer connection often begins with customer satisfaction, which can deepen as a shopper continues to have positive experiences with your brand. Customers with a strong connection to your company might be drawn for various reasons—your brand values, the value-added service you provide, or your personalized communication strategies.

Strategies for building customer connections

Building customer connections is about nurturing a sense of community around your brand. This can take time and serious effort—especially for ecommerce companies that don’t interact with customers in person. But going the extra mile to develop relationships is a proven way to boost customer retention and increase customer loyalty. Here’s how you can build better customer connections:

Give customers value

Want to prove to your customers that you care? Then give them a superior product—no shortcuts, design flaws, cheap materials, or shipping delays. Show new customers that you stand behind your product and want their repeat business. In time, you’ll develop a customer base built on trust, respect, and satisfaction—a recipe for strong customer loyalty.

When Erika was developing Fluff’s refillable makeup compact, she knew she could give customers something better than the plastic clamshell design most brands sell. She spent days on end walking manufacturing floors, looking for the perfect material. When she saw it, she knew it immediately. “It’s a mix of metal alloys,” she explains. “It’s a beautiful material, and it lasts a long time.” The materials and design—paired with the unique value proposition of refillable makeup compacts—put Fluff on the map; customers know they’re getting quality.

Provide excellent customer service

In the US, 50% of consumers have abandoned a purchase after a poor customer service experience, and 33% say they would switch to a competitor for the same reason. The reality is, if you don’t care about your customers, they won’t care about you. You need to provide excellent customer support for your products and services, extending the customer journey beyond the purchase itself.

Although traditional chat boxes and helplines are useful, don’t snooze on direct messages and comments. Customer service is shifting to social media platforms, which offers a rich opportunity for companies to build customer relationships. When customers message your business on social media, you can offer support via direct message or on a public thread. This is a much more convenient customer experience for many users and lets you address customer inquiries quickly. But it’s also a very public place to air problems, so it’s more important than ever to anticipate customer needs and questions and promptly address customer issues with a friendly, productive tone.

Offer a positive message

Erika created Fluff as an answer to the hyper-promotional marketing in the beauty industry. “[The industry messaging] is very much still about more products, about your worth being assigned to what you wear,” Erika explains. “We wanted to be a beauty brand that stood for the opposite of that.” She focused on building a consistent brand experience around that positive message.

Most companies get stuck focusing their marketing efforts entirely on their products. Instead, try building your brand identity around empowering the people who purchase your products. Connect with customers by celebrating them with positive messaging that makes them feel noticed; you could feature real customers in your promotional campaigns and shout out stories or reviews they’ve shared, their achievements, or simply who they are. Identify customer fears and pain points, and show that you are listening and care by addressing customer concerns. This customer-centric shift in marketing can help you create meaningful connections and build a customer community around your company.

Make the buyer’s journey smooth

You don’t want an annoying customer purchase experience to stand in the way of a strong product. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to make your shopping experience more customer-centric. Create a simple, easy-to-read website with only the essential elements. Simplify the checkout process with autofill options, guest checkout, and easy account creation, or turn to an ecommerce platform like Shopify for all-in-one solutions.

If you have a physical store, consider offering self-service options. You can even offer free, self-help resources on your site, like a thorough FAQ page so customers can troubleshoot simple problems on their own. Of course, offer easy access to customer service for when they need more help.

Embrace customer concerns

Sales-first messaging might sound tempting (who doesn’t want more sales?), but it can drive a wedge between you and your customers, who might think all you care about is profit. Strong customer relationships are built around shared concerns and creating solutions together. Try posting content that focuses on the humor, culture, or events in your community, leave out the product placement, and you’ll still be building strong customer connections.

Fluff sells its main products only during four drops throughout the year; the rest of the time, it just sells refills. Erika says this sales model has made all the difference in its marketing. “It really allows us to focus on messaging that we really care about that isn’t product related,” she says. “That helps build our brand and helps build our community.”

Host events or workshops

Although plenty of great customer engagement happens on social platforms, face-to-face customer interactions can give you a great chance to create meaningful connections. For businesses with a physical storefront, you can host events, parties, or workshops to attract customers to your store all at once. Connect with your customers by showing your passion for your business and find out what attracted them to your store.

For ecommerce brands, host Zoom events or livestreams to create a customer-centric culture and help customers feel connected. If you really crave in-person contact, you can host a local event or open a pop-up store.

Listen to customer feedback

Connection is a two-way street—listen at least as much as you talk. Gather feedback and learn about customer preferences so you can better cater to your audience.

Start with the basics of accumulating customer data through focus groups, surveys, and social media comments. Consider messaging repeat customers for their opinions on how you can better meet customer expectations. Or give free samples to potential customers in your target demographic, then solicit valuable feedback. When customers submit positive reviews and messages of support, be sure to send them thanks—and keep track of what elements of your brand are getting rave reviews. And when they give critical or negative feedback, promptly and courteously address their concerns—you just might win them over.

Fluff, for example, often makes social media content through interactions with user comments and questions. In fact, one of Fluff’s most-watched TikTok posts is a video responding to a customer inquiry about its sales model; another popular video addresses a user frustrated about having to wait for the next drop.

“We welcome constructive criticism or conversation or debate,” Erika says. “A lot of brands still close their doors to conversations with their customers, even though they say they’re listening or they want to have a conversation. So that’s a big thing for us too, like actually making sure it’s a dialogue.”

Thank your customers

Everyone loves to feel appreciated, and shoppers are no exception. Find ways to express gratitude to your customers and community by thanking them—both publicly via social media and privately via email. You can also offer existing customers discounts, gifts, and giveaways, free services, exclusive access to new products, or start a loyalty program that rewards repeat purchases. You could even make donations to causes that matter to both you and them, showing them you care about the same issues.