Every business owner knows that it is easier and less expensive to drive repeat business than it is to acquire a new customer. Yet so many new business ideas startups have their budgeting and marketing priorities in reverse, spending all their time and effort pursuing new customers at the expense of keeping their existing ones happy. Here are 7 of the best ways to drive repeat business in no particular order:
- Give Them a Reason to Return
Crest Financial is the growth leader among Utah businesses. But they didn’t get that way by ignoring existing customers. They got that way by incentivizing existing customers to become repeat customers. They offer financing solutions to people regardless of credit. Garnering repeat business in such a competitive industry is difficult. It is all but impossible if customers feel they were not treated fairly the first time.
CrestFinancial.com runs a Google+ page that offers insight into how they do it. One of the videos goes into some detail about how customers are offered a variety of payment options, and higher limits upon payment completion. By reporting to credit services, Crest Financial helps improve credit scores of those who need it the most. Their repeat business did not happen by accident. It happened by giving new customers incentives to become repeat customers.
- Go Mobile
If your strongest customer acquisition tool is the Yellow Pages, then you are missing the bigger market for both new customers and repeat customers. Gone are the days when everyone had a landline phone sitting atop a stack of phone books. Nearly half of American homes no longer have landlines. Your customers have gone mobile. It is going to be mighty difficult for you to reach them for repeat business if you don’t also go mobile. You do this by having a mobile app, or at the very least, a mobile website. For many customers, if you are not mobile, you don’t exist.
- Provide Great Customer Service
Customer service is a winning feature. But it is a feature that the customer does not know you have until after they need it. The best way to lose a customer is to provide bad service. Customers can always tell when you are phoning it in. Going through an automated call tree is a clear sign to the customer that you don’t want to talk to them. Having the call answered by someone who does not have a good command of their language is a sign that you have farmed it out to the lowest bidder. Repeat business is born of great customer service.
- Make the Customer Feel Important
The DMV of any city is the master of making people feel like the least important person in the world. They get repeat business because the people have no choice. How important you make your customers feel when they have to do business with you is a strong indicator of whether or not they will do business with you when they have a choice.
- Be Honest, Even When It Hurts
Customers deserve to know about data breaches quickly. In the case of Premera, the real problem wasn’t the fact that they were breached, as much as the fact that they waited six weeks before reporting the breach to state authorities and customers. When there is bad new, be the first to reveal it. Once you get out in front of it, your customers will have a reason to trust you. Trust and repeat business go hand-in-hand.
- Prioritize Existing Customers
One of the best ways to make existing customers angry is to offer appealing, new customer deals that are unavailable to existing customers. If you are going to give away three months of premium service free to new customers, give something equally appealing to existing customers so that they don’t want to become someone else’s new customer.
- Don’t Forget to Write
Finally, the simple expedient of checking up on an existing customer shows that you care about their experience. Don’t wait for them to call you. Reach out to them when you are not asking for money, and just see how they are doing. At the end of the day, it is the little things that keep them coming back.