Business Benefits of Collaborating with Customers

You want happy customers and they want you to succeed. That’s the foundation for effective collaboration – shared interests and mutual benefit. Plus trust, and a willingness to be vulnerable and let go of total control. Companies that collaborate well do better – that’s why you should collaborate with customers.

Amare companies collaborate with customers as real partners, not just vendors trying to sell more stuff. In these deeper collaborations, customers notice when you listen, appreciate when you act on their input, and become your best resource for knowing how to keep them happy and loyal. 

• Is customer collaboration integral to how you do business? 

• Do customers see you as a partner or merely a vendor? 

• When you do collaborate, are you honest about your aims?  

• Do you enable your employees to collaborate with customers?

Note: Learn more on collaboration with customers, employees, and even competitors in the ABCs of the Amare Way Practice (C is for collaboration!) in The Amare Wave.

Five Amare Ways to Turn Customers into Collaborators

1. Invite them in! Audit how and when you invite customers to provide meaningful input. Work with your team to maximize those opportunities.  

2. Listen, listen, listen. Commit to keeping the pulse of your customers – and reward when it is done. Consider every customer interaction as a chance to do a little research, however informal, and do it!

3. Use Zoom. We’re all using tools like Zoom these days. Have your people commit to doing one short customer call aimed at fostering collaboration, on a video meeting platform every week. Video makes for deeper connection.

4. Co-create. As an experiment, when next solving a relevant problem, involve customers throughout – from understanding the problem to designing the solution.

5. Provide megaphones. Make it super easy for customers to be your ambassadors and naturally share their enthusiasm for you. That’s another powerful form of collaboration.

Please Share This Now & Grow the Wave!

The fact that you are reading this is testament to our shared goal of putting love to work. Practicing what I preach above, there are links below that make it really easy to share this newsletter. Will you please? Many thanks.

Today’s Amare Wave Wednesday Quote

“None of us is as smart as all of us.”

―Ken Blanchard

Thanks everyone for tuning in to Amare Wave Wednesday! Do YOUR one amare thing today to improve your business and grow the wave! 

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With Amare,

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