lifeblood of every business. It takes incomparable more energy and resources to find a new client than to retain an existing one. However, from what I know, many newcomers in business have tremendous problems with keeping their customers coming back.
In many cases the problem lies in the fact that they take a client for granted. To them, once someone starts working with them, they will do so forever. Nothing is further from the truth though. Unless you really look after your existing clients, they will never come back to you. And, providing great work is not enough to achieve that. In today’s post I want to show you exactly how to do that.
How to Keep Your Customers Coming Back
- Provide exceptional customer service
One of the pitfalls of a new business is customer service. We all know the importance of it, however, not many business owners truly realise what to do. And, as a result they commit serious mistakes that in many cases cost them their clients. They say yes to every clients demand, they reduce the price to get the job, they even reveal confidential information to please the client and more. In reality though, none of this falls under exceptional customer service.
Exceptional customer service is about three things:
- Delivering the project on time.
- Delivering on the budget.
- Providing insanely great post project support.
And, in a way, it is the last point that is crucial here. Most business people consider the project to be done when they sent out the invoice. However, this is exactly the moment when it actually begins. Sure, your work on the project might be over, but your work on the reorder only begins now. The quality of your post project support is what convinces people to give you a reorder, or not.
- Entice people to come back
In some cases, great support is not enough to get your customers coming back. If that happens, you can offer reorder discounts to get them back. Beware though, you can do this only once. Constantly reducing the price might lead to working for nothing!
- Introduce a loyalty card
Loyalty cards are very common for businesses like cafes or restaurants. They might not work for a service company, however, you never know. Loyalty card works on a very simple premise, with every purchase you earn reward points, which at some point can be exchanged for free goods, discounts and so on.
There is also one more advantage of loyalty cards, they are a good marketing tool, especially if your competition doesn’t do them!
- Bring your clients closer to your business
Lastly, you can keep your customers coming back by keeping them closer to your company. You can do this by running regular training or workshop sessions for your clients, helping them to run their businesses more efficiently for instance. Or you can have monthly breakfast meetings for your clients, semi networking events where you introduce your clients to each other. This can lead to great business being done between them, and you, as a person that initiated all this will certainly gain their favour too.
Keeping customers coming back is not an easy task. By all means, it requires a lot of work, however, it is still much easier to do than trying to find new clients and convincing them to use you.