Building Rapport in Today’s Business Landscape

The way organisations engage with customers has undergone a significant transformation. The modern customer journey has shifted. Traditional contact methods have given way to a more self-driven approach, including online searches to social media interactions and mobile apps. 

How does this affect your business? Now more than ever, the customer experience starts way before your sales people pick up the phone or your team responds to an email.

This profound shift highlights how vital it is for your business to ensure that your initial point of contact is both positive and memorable. We cannot understate the importance of creating rapport fast. Rapport establishes trust, fosters mutual understanding, and lays the foundation for a long-lasting business relationship.

When your customer feels genuinely connected to you from the outset, they're more likely to continue their journey with your business. This translates to increased loyalty and greater lifetime value. And ultimately higher revenue and profit for you. 

Any disconnect, misunderstanding, or even a hint of impersonality and this potential customer is off to your competition, increasing their revenue and profit and not yours. And likely taking their friends with them. With such a bad taste in their mouth it’s much harder for you  to win them back. You simply can’t derail the customer experience and jeopardizing potential future engagements by your staff having rapport skills lower than your competition. 

Building rapport isn't just about friendly interactions. It goes much deeper. Unconscious rapport is about understanding customer needs, anticipating queries, and providing swift and accurate solutions. It's about ensuring this potential customer never has to repeat themselves and always feels heard. Unconscious rapport is a delicate art, combining effective communication strategies, reading non-verbal cues, and mastering active listening and unconscious empathy.

Sure technology aids in deciphering customer behavior and predicting their needs, but it's still the human touch, the genuine connection and rapport that make the difference between the customer coming to you or heading next door. The personal connection is more crucial than ever, especially when technology sets the stage, making that subsequent human interaction pivotal to your success or failure.

With the stakes so high, how can your businesses cultivate this art of rapport-building? 

Tips to Cultivate Rapport in Business:

Active Listening: Teach your employees to truly listen when someone speaks, rather than just waiting for their turn. This shows your people have respect and helps them to understand the customer's perspective better.

Mirroring and Matching: When your employees, subtly mimic the body language, tone, or speech patterns of the person they're communicating with it fosters a deeper feeling of similarity and connection drawing that potential customer to your business.

Open-ended Questions: Encourage your employees to ask questions that can't be answered with just a 'yes' or 'no'. And listen to the answer. This will stimulate deeper conversations and demonstrate genuine interest in the customer.

Show Empathy: It is important for your employees to recognize and validate the feelings or concerns of the person they're speaking to. Empathy expressed by your people creates a deeper bond to your business. 

Use their Name: Remembering and using a person's name in conversation shows your people validated the customer’s identity. 

Share Personal Stories: Without over-divulging, enable your employees to share a relatable experience or stories can humanize your business in the conversation, creating a sense of shared experience and deeper bond between your business and the customer.

Respect Cultural and Generational Differences: Train your people in the value and power of respecting diverse cultures. 

Follow up: Ensure your employees have a system to follow up after a meeting or conversation. Sending a quick note or message acknowledging the discussion. It shows that your business values the interaction and is committed to a deeper relationship.

Stay Present: Device distractions are commonplace today. Your business will stand as a magnet when your people give customers undivided attention.

Maintain a Positive Attitude: People remember more about how they felt when interacting with your team.  Smile, have a positive mindset and a willingness to help. It will leave the customer not only wanting to come back but also share your business with their friends. 

At DamianAndrews.com we recognise the invaluable role of rapport in customer experience. Unconscious Rapport takes you through high level techniques to establish and nurture connections with customers in a natural, unconscious manner. They will like you because of who your organisation is. 

Unconscious Rapport goes beyond common textbook information. We go deep into unconscious communication, non-verbal cues, and active listening, enabling your business to not only build but also sustain trust, foster strong and develop long-term relationships.

Every customer interaction matters. A single negative experience can lead a customer to jump ship to your competition. Investing in unconscious rapport skills isn't just beneficial; it's essential. 

Our unique system of Micro-Learning, Social-Learning, and Gamification is transformative for your business. Your business requires strategies that can be quickly absorbed and implemented. DamianAndrews.com Micro-Learning, Social-Learning, and Gamification ensures rapid assimilation of knowledge, facilitating faster and more effective changes to your business.

If it’s not unreasonable for you to learn more about how Unconscious Rapport can have a dramatic impact on growing your business revenue and profit, please feel free to reach out. We’d love to chat and understand how we can help your businesses keep up and thrive.

 

www.DamianAndrews.com

Sliding Elephants through Eyes of Needles

E: succcess@damianandrews.com

US +1 (917) 993 7157

UK +44 20 8089 9567

AU +61 3 9998 0450

LI: www.linkedin.com/in/damianandrews/

Pod: www.damianandrews01.podbean.com

 

SHAIR.care

W: www.shair.care

Pod: www.shairdotcare.podbean.com