One of our guiding principles at the Rebel Business School is to treat each customer like your first.
It’s a good soundbite, but why is it important and how do you do it?
This article will show you the techniques used by some of the world’s most successful companies to delight your customers.
There are three reasons:
- Money
- Time
- Money
People buy things because they KNOW, LIKE and TRUST the seller.
So, your marketing and sales needs to find people, get their attention and interest, help them to get to KNOW you and your product/service, get them to like what they see and WANT it and the get them to TRUST you enough to part with their cash.
Assuming you’ve delivered what you’ve promised after the first sale, your existing customers already KNOW, LIKE and TRUST you so the sales process going forward is a lot faster – either because they’re buying something they’ve bought before or you get them to like the look of a new product.
Not only is it FASTER, but it’s also CHEAPER!
It costs TEN TIMES MORE of your money and your time to GET NEW customers, than it does to KEEP the ones you already have.
Here are 7 ways to become BRILLIANT at keeping your customers.
1. Under promise, over deliver
So you tell your customer they will definitely receive the product by Wednesday but something goes wrong and you don’t get it to them until Friday, how does your customer feel? How does your customer feel if you forget to update them on the new delivery date?
Imagine if you promised to deliver by next Monday but you turn up early on Friday morning instead…
2. Ask great questions
Spot the difference between these questions:
Q1: Did you like it?
Q2: What did you like about it?
Q3: Was everything alright?
Q4: How could it be better?
Questions 1 and 3 are closed questions and will get you vanilla answers.
Questions 2 and 4 will give you much more insightful answers and the customer is more likely to be truthful.
Question 3 is likely to get ‘yes it was fine’ whether it was or wasn’t.
Asking great questions sends the message that you CARE about them and what they think.
3. Ask for testimonials face to face
Most businesses forget to proactively ask for testimonials and when a customer says something nice, the savvy business owners will say “ooh, can I film you saying that?”. Not only is this good to add to your website and post all over your social channels, but it also creates an emotional connection with your customer.
Why is that good? It’s AWESOME because you’re creating a deeper level of trust. Why is that good? It’s good because they’re more likely to buy from you again and also send other people your way.
4. Reward for referrals (not a referral scheme)
The risk of referral schemes is that your business can start to feel like a pyramid scheme which may break trust rather than build it.
5. Loyalty scheme
Customers love collecting points – especially if there’s a reward at the end. Loyalty schemes can help prevent customers buying from competitors.
6. Become a service recovery LEGEND
Sh*t happens. Sometimes it’s our fault and sometimes it happens out of our control. How business owners respond to customers when it goes wrong will determine if they keep that customer, sell them more and maybe win their loyalty and trust FOREVER! In your biggest problems lie your greatest opportunities. How do you do this? There are some clues in number 7…
7. Look for opportunities to delight
One of the things we like to do at the Rebel Business School is learn from the techniques of some of the world’s most successful companies.
The boss of Scandinavian Airlines (Jan Carlsson) created an approach to customer service called the Cycle of Service that is followed by THOUSANDS of businesses of all sizes WORLDWIDE.
Why? Because it’s genius and really simple.
Here’s our interpretation. Every time a customer comes into contact with your business, they get to make a decision about the quality of service they receive, which will affect how they FEEL about the experience.
So, each of those moments are described as ‘MOMENTS OF TRUTH’ – they show the TRUTH about your business experience. Do your customers describe the experience as POOR, BASIC, GOOD OR DELIGHT? Here’s how the restaurant could do it (the trick here is to be creative about how to delight – and it doesn’t have to cost any money).
8. Get to know how to help
Getting to know your customers and finding out how you can help them in other ways will help you build brilliant long term relationships.
9. CARE
The American entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk wrote a great book about the CARE economy. In a busy and fast-paced world that automates everything, the businesses that deliver a personal touch and show their customers that they CARE will win. Most of us don’t need that many customers.
