When you close a sale, see the increase in new customers, and build your social media communities, it feels like a big win. It truly is a big win, too. Bringing new customers in is essential to a business’s growth. But it’s not the only thing. Make sure you’re paying attention to how many customers you’re losing. Studies say that it’s six times more expensive to win a new customer than to retain an existing one, but that returning customers are more valuable to the business. Despite that, a lot of people don’t fully consider the customer experience beyond that first sale. So, how should you improve it?
Keep them in the loop
Depending on your industry, your customers may very well be the type that are always keen to see the latest developments and news. They might just be interested in what kind of deals or new products you’re coming out with. Keeping customers informed of changes, particularly those that might benefit them, will ensure your brand sticks fresh in their mind. You can do this through a business blog, through social media, even through an email subscription. Don’t underestimate the customer’s ability to entirely forget your brand if they’re not occasionally given the opportunity to remember it. It can all start by waiting a little while until after they’ve received their product or you’ve completed the service. An email asking them if they were satisfied, paired with the offer to keep up-to-date can win a lot of them over.
Welcome them back with value
If they’re adequately kept in the loop, there’s a good chance they’ll see an offer or a piece of news that gets them back into the customer journey. But you can make that even more appealing to them. For instance, you can offer exclusive deals to those who subscribe to emails to share content through social media. Or you can create a loyalty program that adds a sense of reward to repeat customers. Designing an effective loyalty requires thought, however. It’s not always enough simply to offer them a deal on their next purchase. If you have any exclusive rewards, that makes the program all the more enticing.
Show some humanity
Believe it or not, people like to be treated as humans. Beyond providing efficient and effective service, you need to think about how you add a little more emotional impact to the relationship as well. For instance, you can add a personal touch to deliveries by including a handwritten thank you note. You can give them a more personal treatment in store by remembering their names and conversations you’ve had with them in the past. You can achieve that sense of familiarity in ecommerce, as well. There are more and more sites creating recommendations for repeat customers, using algorithms based on their purchase history and the histories of other customers to make more personalized suggestions.
Finding the answers
What if they’re not entirely satisfied with the product or service? What if they simply have questions to help them get the result out of it they want? Being proactive by asking for feedback and checking up on them is a good idea. Your service needs to go further, however. You have to learn how to measure customer service quality, to make sure that your service has the reliability, empathy, and other qualities that are going to create more positive experiences. Without some inspection of how you treat customers, it’s all too easy to lose many of them to dissatisfaction, even if they truly do love your products and services.
Make them marketing partners
You are going to have some customers who are way more into your company than the others. Those customers should be approached and turned into brand ambassadors. They can be the influencers you need to create a community around. But you can tap into your customer base on a much wider level, as well. Customer-centric marketing, for instance, places importance on gathering feedback, publishing positive results, and increasing word-of-mouth. It can take a lot of work to support an ecosystem of vocal, happy customers. You need to have the time to be active enough in the community to really make the most of it. To that end, many businesses outsource their social media marketing.
Make their success your success
As mentioned above, you can use happy customers as positive social proof that your business works. That display of “this is how popular we are” can be a great strategy. But perhaps an even better strategy is putting the focus on the customer as well. Championing customer success above your own shows that you really do want to help them improve their lives through your products and services. For instance, a marketing company champions customer success by creating case studies of how their services helped their customer increase traffic by 300% over a twelve-month period. Find the happiest individuals, find their story, and use it as proof that you are here for the customers, not just to line your own pockets.
Keep your integrity
Marketing, customer service, and content are all surface level aspects of the business relationship. There is only one core of that relationship and that is the integrity of the business. A lot of businesses lose that integrity when they spot an opportunity to make an extra profit. They change their focus from their original market, abandoning it. They implement anti-consumer measures that prioritize themselves over the customer. They fail to apologize and take responsibility when they’ve done something wrong. Sometimes, it works. Sometimes it sees the boost in profits they want. But their integrity is permanently gone. That means they will never be able to reforge the bond that’s so important to retaining a truly loyal customer base. In the end, that will mark the point where their business started to irreversibly decline.
Your profits, your reputation, the reliability of your business model. All of it is massively influenced by how well you can maintain your customer relationship well beyond that initial sale. The strategies above should help you to make a success of it.