Everything in life is not permanent. Sooner or later, everything seems to fade away. Same is the case with your customer base. Every customer, at some point or the other, seems to make attempts for saving their hard-earned money. For this, they may act choosy or fickle and for this, they might even end up leaving your company. They make the necessary efforts to save their money as much as you making efforts to earn. Both of these factors are indirectly related to each other, so you must create a healthy balance between the two factors in order to build a happy and satisfied customer-base.
However, no one can ever be 100 percent sure about how they can keep the customers always happy while winning lots of new customers. There does not exist a magic formula for the same. Everyone gets to face failure, a couple of times before realizing the real method to maintain a loyal clientele. In case you are losing a number of customers, or speculate about losing a few in the near future owing to the tough economy and intense level of competition; here are a few steps that you need to keep in mind. With these, you can create a rigid and strong bond with all your customers and ultimately retain all those who wished to discontinue your service.
1. As a first step, you must always analyze the numbers mentioned in the reports, to spot the areas of defections. You will need to study the data for every product on the basis of its region of service, customer class and the person responsible for sales. There may be certain areas, where you would see comparatively higher rate of defections than others. There may be a certain similarities in the areas where the defections are spotted. All you need to do is get to the root cause of them.
2. Make it a point to get in touch with your ex-clients and customers to inquire about the reason why they decided to discontinue your service. Find out the reason why they do not prefer doping business with you anymore. Get to the root cause of it. A number of studies indicate that if a customer is dissatisfied with your service, they may not tell you the reason directly. In fact, they may not say a word. But chances are that they may tell a bunch of other people about their dissatisfaction, ultimately leading to a decline in your sales.
3. Always interact with the vendors that entertain your customers. You must never be a frog in the well. Go around and know the word on the street about your products/services. You can never be able to win over your competition unless you know their weakness.
4. Make sure that you study the sales structure and efficacy of your sales people. You must always make it a point to provide the most advantageous sales training to your entire workforce. They must be able to understand the customers’ demands and possess a good knowledge about your product.
5. Regularly keep a check whether all the promises made by your business to the customers are being fulfilled or not. You must study the expectations that your customers hold from your product including the cost, customer service, and even the time taken for the delivery.
6. Always beware about what your competitor is up to. Be a step ahead and smartly conduct a few competitive analysis to be aware about the latest changes that easily attract new clients.
7. Regularly communicate with your customers. You must always speak directly to your clients to ensure that they receive the most excellent service. By maintaining a regular communication, the business relationship strengthens. You must always know the messages that are sent to the client.
8. You could even set up an effective and intriguing email campaign that enlists a discount or a coupon for the customers to avail services at a reduced rate. A survey campaign is an effective way to get some demographic information. You could send emails to all your clients with a simple questionnaire in the form of a simple survey. Once you receive the response from different customers, you can easily collect their details and also be aware about their demands and thoughts about your product and service.
9. Keep a note about the customer purchase trends. You must always study your sales to spot the areas where your products sales are the highest, which products are in a greater demand and how much are the customers ready to pay for them.
Once you diligently start working on the development of your business, success is inevitable. Make it a point to follow the above mentioned steps for growth and expansion.
