How to Keep Customers Coming Back to your Business
While most businesses focus on acquiring new customers, getting your current customers to come back is just as critical. Repeat customers are the backbone of any business. With the help of word-of-mouth referrals and social media, they can become ambassadors for your business. As a result, it’s important to maintain strong relationships with existing customers, probably more than attracting new ones, because it’s more cost-effective. According to research, businesses that increase customer retention rates by as low as 5% raise their profits by 25-95%.
This article will examine the top strategies to win repeat customers, and how a virtual receptionist can help.
Offer Exemplary Customer Service to Keep Customers Coming Back
Providing customer service is one of the best ways to get repeat customers. You can use simple strategies such as remembering your customer’s details to make them feel valued and welcome to your business. Recalling the nitty-gritty details about your customers and what’s happening in their personal lives leaves a lasting impression. Your customers will remember and take note of your business if you offer a positive, quick, and efficient customer service experience.
You can have a customer service line that lets customers contact you with concerns or questions, and your agents must be well-trained to respect your customers’ opinions, value them, and offer the best possible support.
Leverage Social Media to Keep Customers Coming Back
It’s important to show up where customers spend most of their time to keep them coming back to your business. In most cases, those include having a social media presence and encouraging your clients to follow your social media platforms to stay up to date with your business.
For example, when your customers scroll through Facebook and see a new product or service, they’ll be more likely to click on them. A strong social media network helps your business stay relevant, so your clients are more likely to return to your business. You can also spotlight your customers on social media by sharing their testimonials, stories, or user-generated content.
Use Text Marketing
There’s a higher chance that your promotional emails will get buried in your clients’ inboxes or become spam. This is one of the main reasons businesses turn to SMS messaging to interact with customers. SMS marketing has a 98% open rate and offers one of the fastest and most reliable ways to reach your customers.
Besides, most customers prefer receiving real-time updates and information about your business on their mobile phones. Text marketing helps open up communication lines with customers, allowing you to engage with them per their preferences. You can send promo codes, invitations, announcements, and personalized texts with text messaging.
Make Purchasing Desirable and Easy
Most individuals hate clicking through multiple prompts and pages to make a purchase. The more hurdles you put in the way of making the purchase, the more times a client has a chance to reconsider. Make sure your checkout process is easy and quick by instituting the following:
- Free shipping
- One-page checkout
- Mobile-friendly checkout
- Multiple payment options
You can also make your shopping more attractive to customers with promotions and discounts or offer loyalty programs with perks.
Create a Strong Team and Hire the Right People
Even with the best services and products in the market, you won’t get far without a strong internal team. Your team is the bloodline of your customer experience, so it’s important to work with collaborative people who align with your vision and mission and are passionate about your business. Your workers represent your business; hence, you must ensure the team is positive, friendly, and ready to support and help your customers. Bad experiences with employees are the main reason for customers leaving a business.
Stay Innovative
In today’s competitive business world, holding on to your customer base is crucial. As a result, it’s important to watch for your competition and implement the latest technologies that streamline customer experiences. For instance, if you have a slow and outdated website, customers can choose to go elsewhere. It’s important to watch your competition and stay up-to-date with the latest technology.
Benefits of Hiring a Virtual Receptionist to Keep Customers Coming Back
A virtual receptionist is a trained customer service professional who understands how to represent your brand and improve customer experience. These professionals can help handle most tasks that bog down business owners and employees, such as screening calls, handling incoming calls, setting appointments, and taking messages.
Focus on More Important Tasks
Business owners wear many hats when running a business; a million things require their attention. While communication is one of the main components of customer service, it’s not always the most important task for you to handle. When you hire a virtual receptionist, you can free up your time to concentrate on the tasks that’ll grow your business.
Improved Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is important when you’re growing a business. When your clients are happy, they’re likely to come back to your business, and one of the ideal ways to achieve customer satisfaction is by hiring a virtual receptionist to answer their queries on time. Virtual receptionists provide 24/7 customer support, ensuring customers can reach your business whenever possible.
Build Better Relationships to Keep Customers Coming Back
You must build strong customer relationships to grow your business, and one of the best ways to achieve this is to offer customer relationship management service. Virtual receptionists can answer all calls courteously and professionally, helping you build better customer relations by updating them on your service or product. Virtual receptionists are trained to provide customers with the perfect customer service they deserve. As a result, you can foster strong customer relationships.
Project a Professional Image
A well-trained virtual receptionist helps maintain a professional image for your business. Having a professional answering all your calls in a friendly, professional, crisp, and intelligent way will build a professional and trustworthy image for your business.
Virtual Receptionists are Available 24/7
Most virtual receptionists are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, meaning you don’t have to worry about missing customer calls and risk losing business. Customers can also reach your business whenever they want, and this convenience encourages customers to return regardless of the time, day, or season.
Other benefits of hiring a virtual receptionist to provide better customer service include:
- Reducing workload
- Saving office space
- Time management
- Improving your bottom line
- Embracing foreign customers with bilingual receptionists
- Keeping things organized
- Reduced overall cost
Conclusion
While most people and businesses focus on attracting new customers, it’s just as crucial to focus on return customers. Your best client is the one who continues to buy from you, and no business can thrive without retaining existing customers. To achieve this, you can employ strategies such as providing top-notch customer service, listening to your customers, taking advantage of social media, using text messaging, and showing appreciation.
You can also hire a virtual receptionist to help nurture repeat customers. Click here to learn more about how it works, and/or contact us to get started.