Just about every business that involves interacting with customers knows that building rapport is vital to the success of the sales process. Any sales and marketing professional can attest that building trust and rapport with clients can define the difference between hearing a yes and a no. Moreover, building rapport encourages retaining customers for a lifetime.
Therefore, it’s beneficial to know how to build rapport with customers as it is one of the most important customer service skills needed in business. There are ways of building rapport that can help customers feel more comfortable about your service, allowing them to be more relaxed and feel positive about your interaction. These tips to build rapport can help communicate with customers better, especially in a world seeing a decline in interpersonal trust.
Nowadays, only 30% think that “Most People can be trusted.” Learning how to build rapport with customers now takes a lot more skill than it used to but can be adequately gained if you put in the work. So, we’ll teach you how to build rapport with customers that contribute to long-lasting business relationships.
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What is Rapport, and Why is Building Rapport with Customers Important
A vital aspect of providing customer service is building good rapport. Rapport is the connection or feeling of ease that one can have with someone else. It is fundamental to a relationship based on sincerity, which is crucial for customers to feel at ease. Rapport is the bond formed that can lead to meaningful and harmonious relationships between people, and in this case, it can also lead to closing deals.
Research on rapport indicated that building rapport with another person entails:
- Positivity. Those involved in the conversation are both friendly and happy while showing care and concern for each other.
- Coordination. Building rapport develops the feeling of being “in sync” with another person. Both people share a common understanding, with each one’s energies, tone, and body language also becoming similar.
- Mutual Attentiveness. Both people share a focus towards each other and are interested in what they are talking about or doing.
Building a rapport can appear instantly when you find yourself “clicking” with someone. This can also be developed over time. It can grow naturally or be deliberately built. In a sense, rapport is similar to trust. Both can be made simultaneously, but rapport relies heavily on establishing a comfortable bond. Having excellent rapport with people means having better influence, as people you’ve built trust around are more likely to accept your ideas and share information. This creates opportunities for yourself, as well as those you’ve developed a rapport with.
Establishing strong two-way connections is essential no matter what industry you’re in or the position you hold. Building a great rapport with others can lead you to countless opportunities to help you achieve success. Rapport is the fundamental base of any sincere relationship, so it is vital to attain with your customers.
Building rapport means taking the time to know your customers more directly by paying attention to their needs, dreams, and common concerns. Developing this lasting connection with your customers can gain their trust, which will benefit your brand in the long run.
When understanding how to build rapport with customers, it’s essential to understand the objectives of attaining the following:
- Preference and trust. A customer who likes you and your brand won’t hesitate to support you. Building excellent rapport with your customers can lead to connections that often can benefit your brand through preference and loyalty. Gaining their trust and openness through well-developed rapport is a sign of excellent customer service, making it easier to gain more organic leads that lead to other sales opportunities.
- Open communication. A customer who gives you their trust becomes more like a friend. Friends talk to each other openly, as they find comfort in providing information through conversation. Customers who openly communicate with you can provide valuable insight into their wants and pain points, allowing you to fine-tune your methods.
- Customers become more confident in your product. As you develop a better rapport with your customers, they also become more confident in your abilities as a brand representative, as well as the product knowledge you’ve been sharing. This provides more conviction towards your product that can more likely lead to a sale.
- Better after-sales response. Customers with a good rapport will still respond well to you even after closing a sale.
As much as sales and marketing representatives need to gain a customer’s confidence to achieve a sale, building rapport with them means gaining better relationships. Instead of aiming for selling solutions, being sincerely interested in gaining a mutually beneficial relationship is more critical to achieving appreciation from your customers. By showing people that you’re interested in finding the best solutions for your customers to meet their individual needs, it’s easier to gain more customers organically.
10 Steps to Build Rapport with Customers
As you learn how to build rapport with customers, it’s essential to realize that you hold the opportunity to engage with these individuals and make their experience worthwhile. In addition, those with a customer-facing role in your organization need to understand their responsibility for your brand. They have primary exposure and need to build rapport with customers first-hand. This is why understanding these building rapport tips is vital to you and your team:
1. Be Yourself
To build rapport with your customers, you need to gain their trust genuinely. Being yourself and letting your personality become a highlight of your interaction is always the best place to start. While there still needs to be a layer of professional conduct, developing a genuine connection is better than creating a false persona that customers can see through. Here are some ways you can highlight your authenticity:
- Be real. Just about anyone who encounters a person who seems fake or phony will often keep an arm’s length of distance from that person. Being authentic is essential because people prefer interacting with those who are more genuine.
- Take your time to ease into that smile. One of the most prominent body language cues is a person’s smile. Studies have shown that easing into a smile is considered more likable and can add to your sense of authenticity.
- Never overdo. Being too friendly with an overboard enthusiasm will seem like a blatant attempt to connect and ultimately fall flat from gaining genuine rapport.
2. Make a Great First Impression
From the time you approach a customer, your demeanor, behavior, and personal presentation become variables that can influence your customer’s decision to buy your product. This is why making a solid first impression is vital to developing better customer relationships to initiate sales. In addition, a positive first impression can set you up to build great rapport with your customers. To connect right from your first encounter, you’ll need to:
- Check your appearance. How you look will be the first input your customers will experience, which is why you’ll need to make sure you’re always presentable. A person’s physical appearance has a meaningful impact on their experiences and opportunities and can affect their path to success.
- Maintain good posture. Holding your head up and maintaining a good posture isn’t just advisable for your health. It’s also a great way to help you make a good impression on others. Good posture radiates confidence and transmits a good self-image that helps build rapport.
- Relax and don’t forget to smile. Before encountering customers, take a deep breath, and don’t forget to smile. Smiling can improve your mood and drive your attitude to become more pleasant to customers. A smile is also very contagious and can help break the ice.
3. Remember People’s Names
When learning how to build rapport with customers, the most basic thing you need to do correctly is to remember their names. Building rapport with customers involves providing them the feeling of being valued and having you say their names offer a more personalized approach. In addition, addressing your customers correctly helps them be more at ease with you and helps bring down the initial social walls that people tend to put up. Here are some ways you can effectively go through this early exchange:
- Remember through repetition. Upon making introductions, ask your customer to repeat their name. You can ask how it is spelled or even exchange cards when needed. This is a great way to learn how to correctly pronounce their name without being too obvious. Use your customer’s name repeatedly so you won’t lose a grasp of it.
- Be mindful of pronouns. In today’s socio-political sphere, it’s best to be aware of people and the proper pronouns they prefer to be identified with. While it’s unlikely you’ll have to use pronouns when speaking to them directly, leaving it to the customers to address their pronouns themselves is the best way to avoid confusion and awkwardness.
4. Find Common Ground
One of the best tips on how to build rapport with customers is by identifying common ground. Using small talk, you can find the things that you both have interests in, which can fuel your conversations further along. Finding common ground to build rapport can be achieved through the following:
- Let your customers speak. Letting your customers talk about themselves is a great way to develop rapport. Talking about oneself is one of the most rewarding feelings, and having them open up to you is already progress in itself.
- Be genuine. Once your customers are at ease talking about themselves, it’s critical to show them that you’re actually listening to them. Being genuine and receptive towards their personal stories shows empathy, which leads to them being strongly inclined to like you.
5. Be Accommodating
When communicating with customers, it’s valuable to read the situation to determine their current mood. One of the effective ways on how to build rapport with customers is by matching their conversational style to make them feel comfortable. Matching a customer’s energy levels and conversational speed is key to building better rapport while providing a more sincere connection. Here are some techniques you can apply:
- Observe. Being observant of the other’s body language, posture, and expressions can allow you to mirror their actions without being too obvious. Research has shown that people prefer those we perceive to be most like ourselves, and applying this can benefit you.
- Match their temperament. If your customer seems shy, you should behave more introvertedly. Use similar language and tones that your customer uses as well. If they talk more directly and to the point, you should match that style. If they speak in a softer tone, you should lower the volume of your voice.
- Don’t be noticeable. Don’t overdo to avoid the risk of offending someone. Don’t mimic every gesture or use the exact words they do. You can keep them unaware of your actions and deliver a more natural synchronization by being subtle.
6. Create a Shared Experience
To connect with your customer further, you’ll need to create a shared experience. Meaningful human interaction can only lead to better rapport, and shared experiences are a great way to do that. Increased interaction with customers also increases your influence and creates an affinity that connects with the brand you represent. To create a shared experience, you can:
- Spend time together. Shared experiences can be work-related and as meaningful as attending a conference together or attending trivia night with each other. These experiences can be random and unexpected but can build great rapport.
- Collaboration. A compelling shared experience that can assure rapport is collaborating with your customers. Whether it’s crafting the solution to their current needs and problems or brainstorming together to devise a working strategy, working together is a great way to build rapport.
7. Allow Customers to Vent
When building rapport, it’s crucial to understand that customers always have the last say. When a customer is angry and mouthing off a long rant, you might feel the urge to cut them off and start providing solutions. In these moments, it’s better to actively listen and let your customers vent. Much like a friend who needs to get things off their chest, your customer is simply doing the same.
Angry customers need to express their disappointment, and when they’re done, you can start offering solutions to their problems. It’s also a great way to show how you can empathize with your customers, which can only calm them down as they realize you’re someone who acknowledges what they’re feeling.
8. Restate their Problem to Assure Understanding
Most customers who have concerns want to be assured that you understand their issue and can be the one to remedy it. Customers don’t want any defensive reasoning, even if you respond to them with an “I understand.” You can reassure your customer that you understand their situation by doing the following:
- Actively listen. By listening to your customer’s complaints completely, you can determine the response you can provide and the actions you need to solve their concerns.
- Repeat their concerns in your own words. After listening to their complaint, you could try to restate their problem in your own words. This shows that you’ve taken note of their issue while eliminating confusion or the need for clarification. This also provides the chance for the customer to correct you or confirm your comprehension.
9. Make Recommendations
When a conversation between a customer and a sales rep becomes casual, the rapport is established well enough for you to make recommendations. For example, as your customer checks a particular product, feel confident enough to make certain recommendations to help your customer with their needs. While it’s a tremendous upselling tactic, it’s also an excellent way to strengthen your customer’s conviction. When the rapport is good, recommendations, even from sales reps, can seem like a word-of-mouth experience, which helps your customers determine their buying decisions.
10. Build and Maintain Trust
One of the most critical steps to build rapport with customers is establishing trust early on and maintaining it throughout your relationship. trust is fundamental to building rapport and can be rather difficult to recover once lost. Be sure to be reliable and always keep your promises. Whether it’s calling your customer about a special promo, or about that item they told you to notify them about, you need to be a dependable ally. This is also why you should never make promises you can’t keep, no matter how exciting closing a deal can get.
30 Rapport Building Questions You Can Use
Knowing your customers better will allow you to provide better solutions and engineer the proper customer service to satisfy their needs. Rapport-building questions can connect people on a more personal level using unique and memorable ways to start a conversation. Here are 30 questions you can use to ask your customers:
- What do you think about the weather today?
- What’s your daily commute like?
- What brought you to (city/state)?
- When’s the best time of the year to visit your (city/state)?
- What do you hope to accomplish?
- I heard about that restaurant, is the food delicious?
- What’s the one thing you like the most about (city/state)?
- Did you use to work there? How was it like?
- You can speak (second language)? Do you travel to (country) often?
- What’s your current Netflix binge recommendation?
- Did you graduate from (college)? What was it like?
- I noticed your tweet recently that you’re a fan of (artist). Are you going to their upcoming concert?
- What local attraction should I check out at your (city/state)?
- What do you think about the people of (city/state)?
- I’m interested to know more about your (customer’s profession), can you tell me about it?
- What job would you have if you weren’t a (customer’s profession)?
- I saw that you volunteer at (organization). How did you get started with that?
- I saw that you follow (influencer) on Instagram. Do you watch his vlogs?
- What podcast are you listening to now? Do you have recommendations?
- Which leaders in your industry do you think I should follow?
- I read your comment about (blog) the other day. Have you read the update to (related blog)?
- I’m making a list of great blogs for (customer’s industry). Would you have any recommendations?
- You just moved to a new house, right? What’s the neighbourhood like?
- I saw on Instagram that you just went on a family trip. How was it?
- I know you’re pretty busy. How do you stay active?
- Work can be so stressful. Would you have any productivity tips?
- Are you looking forward to (sporting event)?
- I saw on your feed that you have a (pet). Would you ever consider making an Instagram account for (him/her)?
- What are you up to this weekend?
- How’s your family?
Conclusion
In learning how to build rapport with customers, it’s vital to know that it’s all about cultivating trust and understanding. By displaying empathy, sincerity, and genuine interest in your customers, you can provide them with the best customer experience possible while developing a relationship and loyalty that is more than meaningful.
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