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Five Ways to Keep Customers Coming Back It may take persistence, an idea and a bit of start-up capital to begin a business, but sustaining an enterprise requires customers who keep coming back. A five percent increase in customer retention can mean a 25 to 50 percent hike in profits, according business loyalty expert Fred Reichheld, author of The Ultimate Question. Marketing costs drop and sales effectiveness increases with repeat purchases. So why aren't you benefiting? Keeping customers requires commitment and change. Here are a few practical ideas: Enlist all departments Retention means turning customer service into a part of your company's DNA. It's more than just a marketing function or a technology initiative; it takes effort by all departments. When successful, every decision – from investments in equipment to recruiting – is made after asking "how will this affect my customer?" Evaluate business processes to figure out exactly how your customer interacts with different departments. One classic technique: a manager "staples themselves to an order" and follows the document through the company to find information gaps and other hurdles … from a customer's perspective. Identify appropriate behaviors including courtesy, knowledge and usefulness of information that will help that order, or any other customer need, navigate individual departments. As all departments are refocused on customer interactions, incentives should change to reward appropriate behavior. Cultivate employees first Danny Meyer faced one of the hardest entrepreneurial challenges going – opening a successful restaurant in Manhattan. He now owns a string of them, all tied together with a concept he calls "enlightened hospitality." In Meyer's recent book, "Setting the Table," he writes that hospitality is different than service. "Service is the delivery of a product. Hospitality is how the delivery of that product makes its recipient feel." Meyer insists that the first recipients of enlightened hospitality should be employees, followed by customers. The reasoning? When employees feel valued, they pass that feeling onto customers. Meyer looks for special traits when hiring. He says the ideal candidate has skills that are split 51-49 between emotional qualities and technical excellence. His successful employees possess such attributes as optimism, empathy and work ethic. Prospective employees are put through a "trailing" process, a combination of audition and training in which the candidate is evaluated and guided by potential colleagues. Treat every interaction like a big deal Details that may seem low priority to you may rank high to a customer so make sure you're able to respond to every interaction. Behave as if your customer is always peering over your shoulder. Understand what may seem like a minor detail to you or a staffer may anger a customer enough to stop them buying from you. For example, after any customer interaction or complaint (including voicemail messages), one company sends out standard service response cards and at the bottom of the list of questions is one asking if the customer would like a call from the company CEO. The organization estimates it sends 400 letters a month and one percent of those (or just four each month) require a call from the CEO. Of those, about 95 percent result in a repaired customer relationship. Share ideas Architect Joe Rizzo is a well-known library planner. He's helped to save dozens of historic libraries and has taken many more from dreams to bricks and mortar. But since most communities build new libraries only once every few decades, Joe has to be creative about retaining customers. His approach? Keeping past and current clients current on everything from fundraising methods to legal changes to design innovations via emails, postcards, white papers and articles. Joe turns these ideas into presentations at conferences and shares them with editors at influential trade publications. And while a community may build a library infrequently, librarians change jobs and when they do, they call Joe. Shore up your weak link If your website content is out-of-date, links fail to work or inquiries go unanswered, your site needs work. Remember that in today's marketplace, customers can try to reach you in a wide variety of ways. You need to be sure that your messaging and information is uniform across all platforms (in person, by phone and on the Web), and that the level of service you provide is consistent as well. It's quite common for smaller companies to let their websites lag behind, but they need to be a key component to your loyalty strategy. If your site is in need of an update, take a minute to analyze your favorite website – how does it keep you coming back? Borrow from its inspiration and add those kinds of features to your company's site. |
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