Enticing customers to give your small business a chance and ensuring that they become repeat patrons are two very different things. Additionally, in the absence of repeat business, any enterprise would have trouble keeping its doors open. So, if your small business isn’t currently devoting focus and resources to turning first-time customers into regular patrons, this needs to change. Provided you make good use of the following pointers, convincing customers to give your business another shot shouldn’t prove terribly difficult.
Don’t Skimp on Courtesy
We’re often told that the digital age has made interacting with others more impersonal, with the implication being that people no longer care about the quality of their interactions. However, if you talk to many consumers, you’re liable to find that this is not, in fact, the case. Courtesy and warmth are still highly valued in customer service situations, and the demeanor you and your team members adopt when interacting with patrons can have a profound impact on your business’s reputation.
With this in mind, make a point of being as courteous as possible when interacting with customers in any capacity – and make sure your staff does the same. This means being patient and personable, offering apologies whenever necessary and never ending an interaction without thanking someone for their business.
Create Customer Appreciation Programs
In addition to regularly telling your customers how much you appreciate their patronage, you should consider creating programs that provide them with tangible rewards. For example, if your business revolves around selling food and/or beverages, punch cards that culminate in free products can prove particularly effective at keeping people coming back. Furthermore, if you’re looking for a great way to keep customers abreast of special offers and upcoming events, encourage them to provide you with their phone numbers and/or email addresses. Not only will this enable you to keep patrons informed, it will also ensure that you’re able to send them assorted discount codes and other digital goodies.
Provide Convenient Options for Remote Customers
Depending on the nature of your business, customers may not need to visit your base of operations to purchase products or services. As such, if you’re able to carry out transactions remotely, you’d be wise to take advantage of this. Among other things, this entails optimizing your website for mobile browsing. Since many modern-day consumers do the bulk of their purchasing from mobile devices, a website that lags or simply fails to load when accessed on said devices is liable to be quickly forgotten. You should also seek to make navigating the site and the checkout process as straightforward and hassle-free as possible. Additionally, to ensure that your customers’ information remains safe, take care to utilize a good API for financial data.
So, if your website currently isn’t optimized for mobile devices, make sure to get on top of this. If neither you nor any of your team members possess the knowledge and experience to carry out the necessary enhancements, get in touch with a skilled web designer.
Be Willing to Admit Mistakes
When confronted with mistakes we’ve made, many of us instinctively adopt a demeanor of defensiveness. However, while it’s true that not every mistake a customer presents you with is going to be fully valid, the bulk of your patrons’ grievances are likely to reflect genuine shortcomings on the part of your business. Should you choose to defensively push back against these grievances, you’re only going to irritate customers even further and severely limit your odds of ever again receiving their patronage.
So, the next time a customer comes to you with a problem, suppress the urge to immediately go on the defensive and make an effort to see things from their perspective. Furthermore, to help ensure that this person comes away from the interaction with a favorable view of your business, do everything in your power to rectify any mistakes on your end.
Repeat patronage is essential to the success of any small business. While getting first-time customers through the door can be a challenge in and of itself, ensuring that they come back is arguably far more important. So, if you and your staff have yet to regard customer retention as one of your top priorities, things need to change ASAP. By putting the previously discussed pointers to good use, you can effectively set the stage for repeat patronage, positive word of mouth and long-term success.
