Are you losing customers and can’t quite put your finger on the reason why?

Keeping customers happy is the best way you can ensure you will keep them and have them keep coming back to you for business and recommend you to others. 

It’s common for businesses to focus too much on scaling up and gaining new customers, instead of putting their energy into retaining the customers they already have.

Unfortunately, this can result in customers leaving because they feel underappreciated, undervalued, and would rather try their luck as a new customer somewhere else. 

Make 2022 the year you step up the level of customer service you provide and reap the rewards.

How can you improve your customer service game?

Here’s how you can ensure you turn more of your customers into long-term clients.

Create a customer appreciation strategy

Customers can tell whether or not a company appreciates them. If they don’t feel appreciated, they will take their business elsewhere. Great customer service doesn’t create itself—it’s something you have to plan and implement.

Studies show that 68% of customers stop using a business because they don’t feel appreciated. There’s no point putting effort into gaining customers if you’re just going to lose them because you haven’t delivered great customer service.

Here are some of our top customer appreciation ideas:

Contact your customers regularly 

Keeping a steady stream of contact with your customers is a great way to make them feel appreciated.

Keep in touch with a personal email and simply ask if there is anything you can do to help your customers, or offer them support with the services or products they use. 

Remind your customers of services they haven’t used yet—even if they’re just free services. This will keep your business at the forefront of their minds. 

Congratulate customers when you hear exciting news about them. This will make your customer feel valued. Sending a simple birthday message every year with a discount or free service can also go a long way.

Say thanks to your customers

A simple thank you email can go a really long way. But don’t just stop there, keep letting customers know you are thankful for their business. Another great tactic is to offer exclusive discounts to your loyal customers and make them feel like VIPs. 

It has also been proven that including a simple ‘thank you’ in the subject line increases the open rate as well as the click-through rate. 

Send customer appreciation gifts

Another great idea is to send customer appreciation gifts. This is a very small token that makes a huge difference.

Here are some of the best customer appreciation gifts you can send to your customers:

• Personalized cards
• Personalized mugs
• Gift cards
• Chocolates

Promote your customers 

Companies exert a lot of energy promoting themselves and their success stories. But it will actually resonate much more with potential customers if you promote your customers. 

Share your customer’s success stories, and the way they have used your service or product to reach that success. This will give your customers faith in you and your business and will make them more likely to buy from you. 

It also shows that you care about your customers and what they’re doing, not that you just see them as another figure. 

Act on customer feedback

A lot of companies request feedback from customers but don’t then do enough to address the issues they bring up. 

Make sure you have a process in place to monitor feedback you get from your customer and try to come up with ways you can improve your service to meet your customer’s needs. 

Reach out to customers and ask them if the changes you have made have met their concerns to gauge if you’re heading in the right direction. 

Measure your ROI as you implement new customer service 

As you start to implement your customer service and customer appreciation strategies, make sure you keep track of your progress and your ROI. This way, you’ll know if your strategy is working or not, and make sure you’re not wasting time and resources. 

Final thoughts

A strong customer service strategy is crucial if you want to retain your customers. Since customers not feeling appreciated is the top reason for them stopping business with you, this should be a top priority for you within your customer service strategy. 

Showing you appreciate customers through simple and easy acts like customer appreciation gifts can increase your customer retention rate and will also help you grow and gain new customers by improving your reputation through word of mouth. 

Take these tips onboard and you should see a significant improvement in the customer service you provide in 2022, with increased spend and loyalty as a reward!

Resources:

https://www.superoffice.com/blog/crm-charts/
https://www.superoffice.com/blog/customer-appreciation-strategy-for-business/
https://www.superoffice.com/blog/customer-experience-strategy/
https://blogs.sap.com/2011/10/28/the-customer-experience-edge/
https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article-abstract/48/4/610/6254196?redirectedFrom=fulltext
https://accounts.birthdayco.com/gifts.php
https://accounts.birthdayco.com/corporate-birthday-cards.php