If you don’t have a customer retention plan as part of your sales and marketing process, then you are missing half your sales. You could be losing customers because they might feel you forgot about them and just thought they were a dollar sign. Here is a simple start to a retention plan that will help you keep customers along with finding out if you are delivering a quality product or service.
After you have completed a service or sold a product call your client or email them. Calling is preferred but if you have to email them, make it clear that they should call if they have any problems or issues.
Here is a mock call.
Business: “Hello, this is NAME from COMPANY, may I speak to CUSTOMER.”
Client: “This is.”
Business: “Do you have a moment to chat?”
Client: “Yes.”
Business: “Great! I wanted to follow up with you about SERVICE/PRODUCT. I wanted to make sure you are happy and if you have any questions or problems, I’d like to resolve those for you so you are happy. Has our SERVICE/PRODUCT lived up to your expectations? Are you having any issues?”
Client: “Yes, just one. I’m trying to do this and I can’t figure out how.”
Business: “Ok, I can help you with that right now if you would like, and I will also send an email with the instructions.”
Client: “Sure, right now will work.”
………
Most of the time if you did your sales process right and made sure the client had the right expectation, then any rants should be few and far between. And IF there are any problems that the client does express, those problems will be legitimate. Take the time to listen to the issues. Be prepared to address those issues. Now, actually follow through and fix any problems. After you have fixed the issues make another follow up call.
By doing this it shows your client that you care, not only about providing a quality product or service but about them. You want them to be happy with your product/service. And remember these calls are about making sure they are happy, not trying to sell them something.
From these follow up calls you can discover any problems that might need to be address with your product or service, in your sales process, in the fulfillment of said product or service, or any where else in your business. Then by correcting these problems you will be helping your business run better. Which is always a good thing.
So my question to you this week is, are you making follow up calls?
