There are many ways in which you can grow your business and one of the most effective is by selling more of your existing services to your existing clients. To do this, you need a strong relationship with your clients and you need to develop customer excellence. In fact, at a networking lunch I went to recently , the speaker said that customer excellence is the strength of the relationship that you have with a customer.

So what is customer excellence, how do you achieve it and how do you maintain it?

According to Joolz Lewis, the Corporate Hippy, customer excellence involves three things:

1. Care ? this means keeping in touch with your customers on a regular to basis, to see how they are, on a personal level. It shows you care about them and that you have thier best interests at heart. I spoke to a customer a couple of days ago and at the start of the call, rather than launching straight into a asking for feedback on her newsletter, I asked her how her recent sailing trip went. We had a very interesting conversation about competitiveness, which helps build on our relationship!
2. Generosity ? be generous in every way you can, including your smiles and your time. Go above and beyond what you said you would provide. Give advice and information whenever you can. I started working with a new business coach a couple of months ago. She?s new to business and was looking for some clients to work with, to gain experience, so she?s not charging me for her time. At our first session, I offered to give her some marketing advice, to help her get her business off the ground. She was delighted and told me it she hadn?t expected anything in return. We are building up a strong relationship, helping each other?s businesses.
3. Gratitude ? say thank you and show that you?re grateful for the relationship you have with your clients. How often do your suppliers say thank you, just for being a client of theirs? Not often, I would guess. Every year we send out Christmas cards to all our clients and include personal messages in each one, thanking our clients for working with us. Yes, it takes time to think of an individual message and write the personal note, but it makes a much bigger impact than receiving a card that doesn?t even contain your name!

Think about how you use care, generosity and gratitude to develop customer excellence in your business and grow really strong relationships with your clients.