5 Ways to Increase Return Customers
There’s nothing quite like the feeling of having your existing customers return to your business. Strengthening your brand’s connection with existing customers might be the most important you do during this time of year. And some would say it might even be more important than acquiring new customers, with return customers spending almost 300% more than new shoppers.
Customers come and they will most certainly go if your business doesn’t take the steps necessary to take care of customers once they’ve made a purchase. Focusing resources on customer retention strategies and encouraging return customers creates long-lasting (not to mention profitable) relationships.
Interested in growing your return customer base? Read on for five ways.
Align Your Customer Service Operations with Customers’ Needs
Successful brands make meeting their customers’ needs a top priority and are specific about their customer service principles. And they make sure that each employee is aware of said principles.
Make sure you have qualified, friendly people on your team, who are efficient and give personalised service to your customers. Because if the person your customer comes into contact with is unpleasant to deal with, he or she will drive people away from your business.
A few other things that successful brands do when it comes to customer service:
They empower employees to make decisions on the spot while they are interacting with customers, rather than expect them to pass along customer inquiries to a chain of command.
They reward employees who go above and beyond for the customers.
They encourage customers to post reviews of their business on social media.
Make sure to address all customer complaints, even for seemingly small issues. Remember: It often takes years to build customer trust, but only seconds for the trust to erode (especially through social media, where positive and negative reviews can go viral in a matter of hours). By responding immediately to negative reviews or complaints, you can keep them from spreading elsewhere — and you may win back your customers more quickly.
“At Clearpay, we always ensure a response time of under one hour to all consumer messages. We know that our customers expect a lot from and feel connected to us on social media,”
Encourage, But Don’t Force, Customer Accounts
Customer accounts enable making new purchases and repurchases easier by giving customers access to past orders and pre-filling fields, like one’s email, shipping address, and billing information.
We realise that customer accounts might seem like a big commitment for new customers. That’s why you don’t need to register for a Clearpay account before you make your first purchase at a store you’ve found on our site’s Shop Directory.
Simply choose Clearpay as your payment method at checkout. And if it’s your first time using Clearpay, you’ll give your payment details as usual to complete your purchase. Once your first order is approved, your Clearpay account is “created.” All you need to do is visit www.clearpay.co.uk to set up a password , and you’re on your way to make more purchases using Clearpay simply by providing your log in details at checkout.
Highlight Positive Testimonials and Reviews
Think about the last time you made a purchase. You likely asked friends and family for recommendations. And then you probably did a lot of online research and read reviews. The fact is, your company's best marketers and sales reps aren't your employees— they're your current customers.
The sum total of informative product pages, delicious images, descriptive copy, and customer reviews about the product really do much of the selling for your business. Which means something like customer reviews can have a massive impact on if a customer returns to make another purchase.
Highlight and use the power of positive testimonials and feedback in your email newsletters, on social and site.
More than 60% of customers trust online reviews. Use customer reviews to convince existing shoppers to return, discover new brands, or repurchase products from brands they’ve shopped at before.
Keep Things New and Fresh
Ignite customer interest by finding ways to message and market newness in the products you sell and services you offer. Why? Because newness gives your customers a reason to shop with you again!
Email subject lines and push notifications that have “new” and variations of it (like “brand new”, “renew” and “update”) have been proven to boost email open rates.
Show Gratitude
Express your gratitude with something as simple as a heartfelt thank you email—one that’s not related to a campaign or holiday. Such gratitude goes a long way toward building brand loyalty. And customers will remember that you reached out to them for a quick “thank you” that was unsolicited.
Take it a step further by sending a special thank you email (preferably with a promo code or discount offer) as their reward for a referral. The long-term payoff will be worth it, with 80% of future profits coming from just 20% of existing customers.
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