Follow These Steps to Keep Your Customers

Many businesses with great ideas failed miserably, despite the good and optimistic start. What most people don’t know about these businesses is that they (in most cases) made some unforgivable, rookie mistakes. One of the greatest is not being able to keep their customers interested, losing their trust and eventually – losing them in the end. To prevent making this fatal mistake, read these tips about the best ways to keep your customers. All these different strategies are equally important and their goal is the same – to keep customers loyal and happy with your products and service!

Great customer service

Both business owners and clients agree that there’s no truly successful business without exceptional customer service. If you provide a great customer care, you already took the most important step on your way to success. Every customer wants to feel respected and important – and you’re giving them that by providing great service. The most important things to care about are the speed of your response (on-time delivery), consistency in solving problems, patience in communication, friendly approach and treating customers with respect. Two tips to have in mind: it’s not enough to focus on having customer service in one aspect of your business; never satisfy with the current level of service and improve it continuously.

A high-quality product

Not even the greatest customer service will help you if your product is below all expectations. Having a high-quality product or service and constantly improving it is the guaranteed formula for success. If you accompany a great product with great service, and provide something that your competitors can’t – you’ll easily build a fanbase of the most loyal customers and continuously attract the new ones. If you have the best product, you can rely on word of mouth as the best marketing strategy. People will do more than just talk about your brand if they’re truly satisfied.  Whatever you do - make sure that your customers can’t easily replace your product with another one.

Going the extra mile

Providing customers with great product/service is a necessity, but truly successful business must go the extra mile. How? By offering much more than the basics – and providing a full-scale service that will encompass everything: sale, maintaining a product, replacing it if needed. Most businesses appealing to customers offer free trials. This is the best way for a customer to find out if the product/service meets their requirements and quality standards. Whether it’s a free sample, free software trial or a service – make sure that you not only meet customers’ expectations but exceed them. Especially in service businesses, customers will gain trust more easily and come back again in the future. Going the extra mile is a cherry on top that will seal the successful business-customer relationship.  

Bringing lost customers back

Whatever you do, and no matter what kind of service and product you offer, there will always be those who are not satisfied with it. Sometimes, you, as business owner will willingly sacrifice that small percentage of customers and potential customers and opt for building your brand in the direction you know that will make them leaving you. However, the numbers can be wrong. You need to know who is leaving your services. If that’s a long-term customer, ask yourself about what you did wrong and more importantly – try to win them back. A lot less resources are spent if you’re trying to keep your fanbase than attract new customers. Never forget the customers who know you best – reactivate them and reward them for loyalty.

Listening to customers feedback

For the end – let’s go back to customer service. Listening to what your customers say is one huge part of having an exceptional customer care. However, if you don’t know how to process and categorize what you’ve heard, it might be just as you haven’t heard it at all. Always find the way to save, categorize and analyze the feedback carefully collected from your loyal customers. Send them newsletter surveys, post a poll on your website, save the feedback they give via email, phone or in person and don’t forget to give them credit for it. Don’t wait for them to send their improvement suggestions – reach out. The very act of asking them about their opinion will make them feel worthy, respected and listened to.

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