Building customer relationships when it's not possible to meet physically. 🤝

When I started my first company, the first-ever paying customer was about 8000 miles away from me, living in the United States selling Soup ingredients. I never met her in person, I didn’t wait in reception outside her shop to convince my product (that’s how sales worked in the company I worked earlier). So how did the relationship started and what made her choose to pay us for the next 4 months? It’s no secret that the internet is our future and many businesses are doing the sales world-wide thanks to the cloud infrastructure. So it becomes important to understand how to build relationships with the people we do business without ever actually meeting them physically.

Perhaps the most important I have learned is to make your customers feel like a family, a social clan working together. “You share as much information as you can about your problem, and I will try to solve them one after another”, this is what I tell customers in phone calls. There are things I could have done differently as well, and I write a few ideas that will help you create this strong maker-buyer relationship.

Build a collaborator community where your customers provide help and support to each other, a place where people can ask and answer questions but you also have to ensure previous questions are answered and found easily. This drives engagement in people and makes your community more re-usable. The more engaging the community is, the more people will be willing to join the clan, and the greater value you gain. Organize online meet-ups, keep the group small 5 - 10 people, and have discussions on topics related to what they do.

Many global brands have used this to build their successful business, especially technology companies. I can name you a few examples like Stripe, Quasar Framework, Digital Ocean -- with the core of their business is not their product but the problem they are solving itself.

Unsurprisingly, all these companies not just grew in revenue but also earned thousands of people’s trust and love for what they do. I am thankful that Stripe exists on earth, helping me with YC pitch lines, financial planning, tax filing, and much more.

Moving on, my next recommendation is to write emails often, become good at it. Check on your customers regularly, and please don’t use no-reply emails. For example, weeks after solving a reported bug, write an email to check if their experience improved any better. I ask you what it takes to trust someone, what would be your answer? It is about knowing someone deeply, the vibe around them, and the reasoning behind their choices. The same goes for business too, your customer needs to know you can be trusted with their money, and you need to know your customer very well to solve their problems.

[To be Continued]

While I got so much more to write, I will try to keep the post short and sweet and write more in a new post. Post your questions and let's discuss them.