When entrepreneurs understand the actual cost of losing a customer, they see their existing customers in a different way. What steps can business owners take to improve their customer retention rates?
1. Contact your company’s best customers regularly. Identify the customers that account for 75 to 80 percent of your company’s sales and call them (better yet, visit them) at least once every quarter.
2. Keep your company’s name in front of your customers. You can accomplish this by consistently advertising, sending useful newsletters or e-mails, sponsoring workshops, seminars, or special events, or visiting customers to learn how your company can serve them better.
3. Reward existing customers, especially longtime customers, with special deals exclusively for them. It might be a special sale or a bonus discount.
4. Surprise existing customers by giving them something extra. In Louisiana, locals call it a lagniappe (“lan-yap”), a small gift that a merchant gives to a customer. Send loyal customers a special gift or include an extra “bonus” in their next order. It does not have to be expensive to be effective. For instance, when customers make a sizable purchase at Wilson Creek Outfitters, a fly-fishing shop in Morganton, North Carolina, the owner includes a dozen flies in the order for free. The cost of the lagniappe is minimal, but the goodwill and loyalty it garners are significant.
5. Keep track of your customers and their needs. Take the time to build a database of your customers, their contact information, and other relevant information about them and their needs.
6. Don’t take your company’s customers for granted. Your competitors are trying to lure them away; don’t give them a reason to go! Avoid the tendency to become so inwardly focused that your company forgets about the importance of its customers.