Knowing how to keep your customers happy, and ensure that they want to come back to you again and again, is a hugely important thing. And it can also be the kind of thing that is surprisingly difficult to achieve. Of course, if all businesses succeeded at this, then it wouldn’t be much of a challenge, but the truth is that it can take some time and patience to really make it work.
In this post, we are going to take something of a deep dive into just what it is that brings customers back again and again. All of the following are worth looking into if you haven’t done so already, and they are going to be the kind of thing that you can always work on more, if you want to. Let’s take a look.
The mindset and approach of your employees is one of the most vital things that you need to think about, and which affects how your customers feel about the experience of dealing with your company. So it’s a really good idea to make sure that you are keeping your employees happy if you want your customers to pick up on that. And the most important thing here is simply ensuring that they are fully and actively engaged with the work as they do it.
The more engaged they are, the better their approach will be towards the customers, and that is going to make a huge difference to your ability to keep customers happy and coming back for more. So do all you can to keep your employees engaged: treat them right, keep them happy, and make sure that they feel as valuable to the whole process of running the business as possible.
It’s always important to keep your prices as low as you can keep them. This basic fact about running a business is still as true as it ever was, so you should definitely make sure that you are thinking about that as soon as possible. To ensure this, you have to think about what price you can offer your products for while still keeping them profitable in some way. Then you need to carry out some research on what your competitors are pricing their similar products at. After you’ve done that, it’s time to take a look at your products and see whether you might be able to reduce their prices.
You might actually be surprised at how much you can do this. And the thing is that you’ll have much more loyal customers in no time if you can do this, so it’s the kind of thing that is always worth looking into. You would never do badly from keeping your prices low, as long as you are still running a profitable company, so make sure that you are doing that as best as you can. It’s amazing what a difference it can make to your customers’ happiness levels and their likelihood of return.
Although payment is one of the simplest things to get right, it is also one of the easiest to get wrong. And one of the most common ways in which that can happen is by not offering enough of a diversity of means of payment. You need to make sure that your customers are able to pay in any way they like - the more methods you offer, the happier they are going to be. There are of course many methods out there today that you might want to incorporate into your payment process.
So what are they? You have the traditional means first of all: cash, debit and credit card, and even cheque. But there are many other more modern alternatives that you should consider as well. You can read more about that online, but essentially you’ve got pre-paid cards, phone contactless payments, digital wallets, bank transfers, and of course direct debit authorisations and so on too.
So make sure that you are offering these as much as possible. You also want to ensure that, however you take payment, the process is easy and simple. For online payments, that means keeping the website up and running at all times, and generally making sure that it is secure. You also need to think about the in-person process, if that is applicable for your situation. Better trained staff here will help a great deal, as always.
Another word for bringing customers back again and again is loyalty, and this is something that you might want to specifically and actively try to encourage in people. As it happens, there are many known ways to do this, and it might be easier than you think to make a reality out of it. There are probably many loyalty schemes that you have yourself followed and found to be worthwhile, and your own customers are going to find this as well if you offer it in the right way, and make sure that the infrastructure is there for it to work well.
How you offer a loyalty scheme will depend on many factors, ranging from the type of business you have and what your product is, to the kind of people your customers tend to be. But it is easier than ever to put it into place, and you should definitely try to make sure that you bear that in mind. You might want to look into email newsletters, card discounts, and other means, to make sure that you are doing this as actively as possible.
If you can increase loyalty in this way, it’s going to mean that your customers are so much more likely to come back to you again and again. And that is of course exactly what we are aiming to achieve here. It’s one of those things that can make a huge difference to your business in so many ways, so it’s well worth thinking about. You’ll find that your business is in a much better place overall.
All products are there to offer a solution to a problem - even if it is a problem people didn’t realize they had until you showed them. So you need to make sure that your products are not only helping people with a solution, but actually that they are the best possible solution for that problem. That is one of the surest ways to ensure that you are keeping your customers coming back, because they are going to consider your solutions to be the best.
Remember that this is partly about making the best product you can, and party about making it known that you have done so - in other words, you need to work on your marketing at the same time as your product development itself. Of course, the best kind of marketing - partly because it doesn’t cost you a penny - is that which your customers do for you, by telling other people about the product. So if you make a good enough product, that is what you will find happening anyway.
Just make sure that you are proud of a product before you put it out there into the world. That’s ultimately the most important thing here, and it’s something that you are going to find really helps, so it’s well worth thinking about.
The quality of your customer service is just as important as the quality of the product - in fact, it might be even more important. It’s the kind of thing that will show customers that you care about them, and that is what they are going to need to feel if you are going to get true loyalty out of them. Of course, it’s one thing knowing that you need to provide great customer service, and another knowing what that actually means and how you can achieve it. So what are some of the things you’ll need to bear in mind here?
Probably most important of all is that you are treating them right, as human beings, and that you deal with their concerns head-on as best as you can. That includes, most importantly, dealing with problems and complaints in a way that they are going to really appreciate. If you are able to do that, you’ll find that your customers are so much happier and more likely to enjoy using your services and buying your products. It’s amazing how much that can help.
If you manage to keep on top of that, it’s going to help them out hugely in coming back for more. So that is something that you should definitely make sure you are focusing on as best as you can.
If you have done all that, it’s going to mean that your customers are coming back time and again, and that is something that you will definitely be happy for. That’s likely to keep your business on the up and up more than you might think, so it’s important to keep that in mind.