4 Ways to Show Customer and Employee Appreciation
At the heart of every business, there are two things: the employees who come to work every day and the customers who buy the products and services the business is selling. But if your sales are low and your employees are unsatisfied, there is probably one reason for it.
If you’re wondering how to increase sales and what to do when employees keep quitting your business, the answer is pretty clear. Show both your customers and your employees that you appreciate them. If you are wondering how to go about achieving that, you’ve come to the right place.
Thank your customers on social media
Regardless of what kind of business you have, you probably have a social media presence. Seeing as how there are 3.96 billion social media users across all platforms, companies of all sizes and niches use social media to promote their business.
But your social media profiles can help you do much more than just promotion. If you use them right, they can be a great platform for expressing customer appreciation.
Here are some of the ways you can use social media to show your customers how much you value them:
- Create customer appreciation posts. Come up with a post that has great imaging and copy in which you will thank your customers for their trust and loyalty to your business. You can also consider creating a video for this.
- Post user-generated content. If your customers create content in which they show themselves using your products, sharing that content would be a great way to show appreciation.
- Hold giveaways. When you hold regular giveaways, not only will your customers see that you appreciate them, but they will also feel like buying from your business offers additional benefits.
You can also use LinkedIn to create messages and personalize them with the help of an automation tool. And if you use LinkedIn in your business operation, this tool can help you automate LinkedIn connections, generate leads, and build a network.
Give your employees free food and drinks
Your employees are the backbone of your business, and if you don’t know the importance of employee appreciation, it’s time to learn about it. Hoppier has some great ideas on why and how you can show that you appreciate your employees.
When you’re looking for ways to show this appreciation for workers in your company, you don’t have to just think big. Sometimes, even small gestures can mean the world to them. One of the most frequent but still very popular forms of employee appreciation is providing free food and drinks.
This won’t be too big of an expense if you stick to simple things such as doughnuts, pizza, coffee, and soda, but it is bound to put a smile on your employees’ faces.
Send thoughtful gifts to customers
When most people hear the phrase “corporate gifts,” they instantly think of swag. And while company swag can be a nice gift for certain occasions, if you truly want to impress your customers with gifts, you need to ensure these gifts are thoughtful.
To be clear, a thoughtful gift doesn’t have to be an expensive one. Your customers won’t care about how much money you spend as long as you present them with something that aligns with their values or something that is related to your business.
Let’s say that you own a coffee shop. In this case, a thoughtful gift for a customer would be a bag of free coffee as a sign of appreciation after they’ve been your customer for a certain amount of time.
And as for aligning gifts with your customers’ values, this is especially important if you know your customers well. For example, if your customer base consists of people who care about the environment, you need to get them something environmentally friendly.
Start an employee recognition program
Did you know that 44% of employees switch jobs because of not getting adequate recognition for their efforts? To avoid that, you can start a formal recognition program for your employees in which each staff member will be recognized throughout the entire year.
You can think of small rewards that employees will get on a daily basis for completing important tasks and big rewards for employees who stand out the most each month.
If you’re not sure what these rewards should be, you can simply talk to your employees and see what they would like to receive. It can be something like gift cards, certificates for a wellness day, a coupon for their favorite restaurant, and much more.
Final thoughts
Not too long ago, employees were seen as disposable, and customers were seen as nothing more than a source of income. But times have changed, and if you want to keep your employees and customers around, you need to demonstrate as much gratitude toward them as you are able to.
