Increasing and retaining your customer base is essential for your business to grow and prosper. Everyone knows that customer service is always important, but in these tough economic times it’s more important than ever. Many companies that previously competed solely on price are now seeing their competitive advantage eroded.
We see that pricing policies are increasingly aggressive, as well as increasing the added value of the products and services offered, with the aim of increasing the customer base. If you are lucky enough to have a good clientele, you should know that now you have also become a target for your competition , in short, now the competition will try to “fish” in your pool .
To do? You have to offer exceptional customer service to develop permanent customers, impervious to the siren songs of your competitors, easy to say, hard to do.
You may be thinking “my business already has amazing customer service, we don’t have to worry about it”. But, you are wrong . The competition is trying to get on with business the same way you are, right now they may be refining their methods, restructuring their pricing, and increasing their level of customer service. What you have been doing up to now is no longer enough.
In this economy, you can’t afford to lose a customer to your competitor , so you must take steps to prevent customer churn, act before they walk out your door (perhaps never to return)…
5 Steps To Increase And Maintain The Customer Base
Table of Contents
1. Survey All Your Current Customers And Ask Them What They LIKE About Your Business
Find out why you’re their #1 choice for Product or Service X. Take notes and flaunt those attributes like never before. These are your new weapons against your competition, use them thoroughly.
2. Ask Your Most Loyal Customers What They Do NOT Like About Your Services And/Or Products
Don’t take ‘no’ for an answer . Every business has room for improvement , and an honest review from your client is extremely valuable. Please note that I did not suggest that you ask all of your customers what they dislike about your business.
Asking customers what they don’t like is a bit tricky… you don’t want them to think about it too much, maybe they realize they could be better served elsewhere.
Be sure to ask the tough questions of those customers who haven’t defected even after realizing they know all your flaws. Loyal customers will surely appreciate that you are making an effort to improve your services.
3. Fix Your Flaws!
Their loyal customers have given you very important information, pay attention and do whatever it takes to correct it. Do your best to resolve as many complaints as possible, and do so as quickly as possible. Even if you can’t fix everything , do your best to apply some new strategies as soon as they have completed the surveys.
If you survey customers and then they don’t see any change , you may have just disappointed them. When people respond to surveys, they generally expect that after the survey, their complaints will be resolved. If you do not present any improvements, they may feel that answering your surveys is a waste of time .
Once you have a list of the most common complaints I suggest you do an analysis using a Pareto chart for decision making . So we try to see what are the problems that appear most frequently, in this way, if we solve the causes that cause those problems, we have eliminated most of them.
In other words, by concentrating on a few points that are significant to our clients, we act on the points that represent the greatest potential gain for our efforts.
4. Steal Customers From Your Competition
It is very likely that you and your competition are more similar than you think. What your customers like or dislike about your business, you probably have in common with your competition.
For example , perhaps in your area of work, your service is known to have a slow response time. If you could tune your model to offer a faster response time, there’s a good chance you’d be able to get a good share of your competition’s customers, even at a similar or slightly higher price. Surveys not only give you information about your business, but also about your competition.
5. Repeat The Procedure!
You should always be honing and refining your customer service to match customer demands. The most successful companies adapt to their customers and are never complacent. In this recession, customers may be willing to give up some things to get a lower price.
Or maybe they need additional incentives to get them into your business. In a booming economy, price isn’t usually that important and you’ll have to offer something else to make them happy. The point is that customer service needs are constantly changing and it’s up to you to stay on top of the trends.
Conclusions
You cannot afford to lose a client at the hands of your competitor, these 5 measures that we propose to implement will help you prevent your clients from leaving the door of your business, perhaps never to return…
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