How not to lose Customers

“The easiest way to grow your customers is not to lose them”, so says Robert Clay of Marketing Wisdom. Businesses lose 10% to 20% of their customers each year for numerous reasons and the reasons may startle you. Inattentiveness, lack of communication, lack of extraordinary customer service or service negligence.   Whatever the reason, the consequences of the loss can be catastrophic to businesses of every nature.  However, while there is no magic answer, there are immediate resolutions to help you retain your clients.

Extraordinary Customer Service: Each and every employee should be dedicated to the idea of delivery of amazing and superlative service to each customer that walks in the door. This means knowing their names, their treatment history, their goals, and their priorities. Also, responding immediately to their needs, going above and beyond the norm, delivering service that you want personally. This is an attitude that needs to be instilled every day, in every way.

Reliable Products and Services: Very few things can turn a customer against your business than unreliability of a product or service. Ensure that what you offer has the stamp of approval of virtually every employee. This means that products and services must reassure customer satisfaction. What that means is satisfaction guaranteed…not just guaranteed but assured. Nothing says confidence like a product or service that the business and employees stand behind. Nothing can ruin customer confidence like a product or service that fails to deliver what is promised. Ensure that the staff is well versed in the value of a product and service and can relate that to the client and ensure that using a product or service is the norm.

Reconnect with the “drifters”: Those clients who have not kept appointments, who have not returned for months, who have not purchased must be reengaged. These clients must be reactivated buy using some basic communication skills that everyone can help with. Emails, phone calls, letters offering specific incentives, special deals and other enticements to return. Every week or month, a select group of drifters can be contacted by the staff and offered encouragement to come in and get a product or service. Minimally, these clients could be a source of dissatisfaction that can be dealt with internally. If there have been problems in the past assure the client that things have changed. These retention ideas are merely a few of the things that can be accomplished regularly that work to ensure that you won’t lose 10 to 20% of your hard won customers.