Valentines Day is just around the corner. Whether you love it or loathe it, it’s a time of year when our thoughts turn to love and relationships. And that applies to businesses too.

With costs to get a new customer up to seven times higher than it is to keep an existing one, building long-term relationships with customers is essential. We share some expert advice from a psychologist about the ingredients for a healthy relationship - and how you could apply that to your business.

Here are the seven things that are needed for a healthy relationship:

Interest in the other person

All businesses are there to make money but focusing on this at the expense of your customers has a detrimental effect on their relationship with you and may lose you custom in the long-term.

Just like in any relationship, it’s important that you listen and understand what they need. Make sure you’re open to hearing their ideas and what they’d like from you. Maybe conduct some research to find out what they’d need - online surveys like Survey Monkey and Smart Survey let you do this really easily.

Acceptance and respect

All relationships can be tricky and those with customers are no different. Maybe they are demanding or maybe they don’t understand why you can’t build and ship something to them in five hours.

It’s important to accept that there will be challenges and not to let that impact on your professionalism and the way you deal with them. Some things can be changed with good communication and some things won’t improve. But if you want to keep the relationship going, you will need to accept their foibles and try to adapt.

Positive regard

Always look on the bright side - recognising that negative things can be honest mistakes or due to pressures within their business can help build a healthier relationship. Think about the benefits of working with them and understand that they will face challenges too, which can affect what they do.

If there are opportunities to meet up informally with customers, this can help to build up a stronger relationship. Maybe have an open day at your office or store, or catch up informally for coffee to keep in touch with them and their business.

Meeting their basic needs

While you may have amazing ideas for add-on services and extras, it’s important to make sure you get the basics right. Knowing what your customers want (by showing interest and listening to them) means you can prioritise these needs first. Once you’re providing a great service here, you can branch out into new and exciting areas.

Positive interactions

No relationship is perfect but it’s important that your customers see you in a positive light. That means that, as with any relationship, the good outweighs the bad. Keep talking about any issues, deliver on your promises and make it easy for people to contact you. That will help them to raise any issues early so you can take action.

Rupture and repair

If there are any serious issues, then you’ll need to repair the damage quickly. There are a number of steps to doing this:

• Be available: make sure it’s easy to get in touch with you and monitor social media and emails to ensure you know when customers raise an issue.
• Start immediately: start a conversation as soon as you recognise that there’s an issue. While it’s tempting to put this off, it’s best to address any problems immediately.
• Listen: find out what went wrong and how that made your customer feel.
• Recognise their feelings: before you move on to fix the issue, take some time to acknowledge how they feel.
• Take appropriate action: take steps to fix the situation. Remember that an apology can be part of this, especially if you were at fault.

Companies like Amazon have built their reputation on excellent returns policies and handling situations well. Could you do them same?

Solve problems

Everyone faces challenges from time to time and having a supplier or business who can help is a real benefit. If you can take steps to fix your customers problems or make their life easier, it’s likely that they will stay loyal to you. Think about what you could offer that would fix their problems and be open to any ideas they may have.

Reciprocity

Making sure your customers are happy in their relationship with you brings big benefits to your business. Not only do you retain your clients, helping to reduce your acquisition costs, but you can also ask them to refer you on to other prospects too. Happy customers generate positive word of mouth and referrals are more likely to convert. So it pays to invest time in your relationships with your customers for the long-term benefit of your business.