Irrespective of your business niche, you won’t be successful if you don’t have customers. According to some research results, a business can improve its profits by 25% to 95% by increasing customer retention rates by a mere 5%. No wonder it is important to plan effective strategies for customer retention to grow a sustainable business.
Customer retention is important for any business but it is especially true for small businesses. Whether it is good, bad or indifferent – each customer has a unique experience with your organization and the services or products that you offer. In order to improve the customer experience, it is important to know this at the first place.
Here are 5 simple, yet effective tips that will help small businesses retain their customers:
- Make a smart appearance – Just imagine how embarrassing it would be for your customers to find a disorganized departmental store with garbage all over the floor and a bad smell in the air and all the products in a topsy-turvy condition. Do you think they will come back only for those discounts? Most likely, they won’t, ever. Therefore, make sure your offerings have a smart packaging that encourages buyers to look deeper into them and buy even when they might not need those services or products.
- Train your employees – Make sure that all your employees are well aware of the products and services that are being offered by your business. It will be really embarrassing if one of your employees fail to talk about the details or give incomplete information about a particular product when asked by one of your customers. Such incidents would create an extremely negative impression among your prospective buyers, who are most likely never to return to you, or recommend you to others.
- Offer attractive prices – This is undeniably one of the major aspects of keeping your customers return again and again. While it is important to make some profits, you should also ensure that you offer an attractive price, as compared to your competitors.
- Choose a strategic location – One of the most important strategies to make a small business successful is to locate it strategically. This not only means the correct demographic area, but also on which side of the road the store is located. For example, a store that is located on the side of a busy road is most likely to get lesser customers, than the one which is located on the alternate side.
- Advertise your business the right way – It is quite obvious that you have to get your business advertised using the right platforms that target your desired clientele. Your advertisements should also use persuasive words (such as new, free, instantly etc) that encourage customers to buy more than others. After all, not all words are created equal.
Above all, you have to ensure quality customer service, and give the buyers a personalized experience; if possible, as they play an effective role in helping you create a tribe of loyal customers.
However, before you begin to attempt to retain customers, you need to ensure that your processes are up to the mark. Your HR needs to function like a well oiled machine, with zero mistakes. Have a look at some of the greytHR customers who would agree.
