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'Why it pays to reward your customers'

Written by: Mark Gwilliam

Article Overview: Over the last 10 years, I have learned many lessons managing my own companies and consulting to my clients and by far the single most vital lesson is ensuring that customers stay happy. In this article I share my thoughts about this essential topic.

'Why it pays to reward your customers'

The logic for this is unassailable. Marketing consultants will advise you it costs anything from five to seven times more to acquire a new customer than keep an existing one. According to some, reducing customer attrition by as little as 5% may result in an increased profit of between 25% and 125%.When times are thriving and sales are buoyant, it is often easier to fill gaps left by a departing client. There's also not as much of free time to identify explanations why the former customer left or do anything to prevent it.

As ever, it takes a major slump like the current one to remind all businesses of the significance of caring for current relationships and keeping customers loyal. Tough times are already probably forcing your customers to ease expenditure and seek ways they may save. Creating a solid, trusting connection with them may lessen the chances of your business being top of the list of cost reductions.

Keeping up a regular, well informed dialogue helps retain customers. Discover what they want and how the service could be enhanced. To avert being intrusive, it's always prudent to ask them where and how they'd like to be approached and how frequently..

As soon as you grabbed their awareness, be willing to converse openly about everything that concerns them. Given the current predicament, this might encompass anything from the awkward matter of a possible cut in price to be alternative ways of working. But it could also highlight other areas of improvement unconnected to the recession, such as how well your sales and marketing people are performing or another way in which the customer's account could be handled.

Companies need to think differently if they are to emerge from this recession. Large or small, we're in this downturn together, so it makes common sense to operate in partnership with customers and suppliers to guarantee survival.

At Business Advsiory Accounting & Tax Services, for example, it's not just our direct customers that we take into account as associates but also the businesses which supply us with our hardware; software, stationery etc. We might pass on any useful information to them on managing the effects of the downturn, for example, and they to us. The benefits of this are that we understand where they're coming from and what they're doing to decrease risk in a downturn, and vice versa.

While all this is happening, your service delivery must be be top knotch so work hard to keep up an superb customer experience with clients, new and old. Develop and improve every part of your offering from how you manage to the quality of your products or services.

By pulling out the stops to serve old customers, you'll not only keep them on board but they'll also spread the word about and facilitate you secure new ones. And don't overlook to reward them for their loyalty: smaller businesses may not be able to extend to the expense of a loyalty card system but there are various small gestures you may make to keep them contented.

Spending a small amount of money on your current clients now will be advisable in the longer term when this recession picks up.

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Article Tags: accounting, amp, common sense, customer attrition, downturn, explanations, free time, gaps, informed dialogue, logic, marketing consultants, partnership, predicament, recession, relationships, sales and marketing, seven times, slump, survival, tough times



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Re: The Best Method for Online Marketing - I found success with email marketing and combining it with social networking and social media tools. Alternatively, when I collected business reviews from my customers and posted them to my website, I again saw a surge of traffic. Getting active for at least half an hour everyday for blogging and forum posting, pays well too.
Looking for Mentor - referral directory / reward program - Hi all, Hope all doing well. I am in the process to start a new internet based business referral directory aligned with a local community development reward program. Ideally, I am looking for a successful entrepreneur with some back ground on business directory and/or reward programs. Looking forward to hear back for the forum, AM
Re: How do we stimulate more forum activity and interest? - Hi GT, I think we have touched on this problem before and I’m sure it is a cause for concern for Evan and yourself. I don’t know how many new members we attract every month but there has to be a reason why they are happy to introduce themselves and then largely disappear from the topics apart from a few who remain active. The quality and resources of the forum are first class so there has to be something perhaps as David has suggested to reward activity but it can be hard to police this. Is their perhaps any mileage in a reward purely for the highest number of posts by a non moderator member as well as the overall winner or maybe a member of the month award. I don’t really have anything unique to offer but I am off to Spain for a week tomorrow and will see if anything comes into this gap between my ears while I am away. regards, Mal.
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Re: The Best Method for Online Marketing - [quote="mark_white4281":4toxn76d]I found success with email marketing and combining it with social networking and social media tools. Alternatively, when I collected business reviews from my customers and posted them to my website, I again saw a surge of traffic. Getting active for at least half an hour everyday for blogging and forum posting, pays well too.[/quote:4toxn76d] I would imagine that email marketing works best if one already has a list of subscribers to send the emails to. MichelleJ


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