8 Ways To Keep Customers Coming Back

1. Build an unbeatable bundle of products and services. If you want to keep your customers, make sure they can get what they want without leaving your premises.
2. Give customers an incentive to come back. Be it a gift, a discount, special financing or a chance to win what’s behind Curtain No. 1, customers come back for incentives.
3. Tap into the power of communities of interest. Try thinking about your customers as a community and your company as the common connection they all share. To get a feel for how strong that bond can be, just drop in on the annual Harley-Davidson rally each summer and suggest that some other company builds a better bike. Purchase a new Harley-Davidson and it comes with a free, one-year HOG (Harley Owner’s Group) membership. The loyalty of Harley-Davidson owners is legendary—with some riders even getting tattooed with the company logo.
4. Stand behind your work and reap the rewards of trust. If your customers don’t trust you, they won’t come back. Period. But, if they do, you can survive the roughest seas.
5. Support good works and your customers will support you. Doing well by doing good is a powerful loyalty builder.
6. Show your appreciation to every customer. Thoughtfulness counts.
7. Know your trophy customers and treat them the best of all. If the Pareto Principle runs true at your company, you will find that the top 20% of your customers contribute 80% of sales.
8. Find out what your customers want and give it to them. Maybe it’s time to listen. In Worcester, Mass., Fallon Clinic began listening to its customers’ complaints and found that many of them centered on one department’s doctors. Some fast interpersonal skills training for the staff, and patient complaint levels were reduced by almost two-thirds.
Source: “1,001 Ways To Keep Customers Coming Back,” by Theodore Kinni and Donna Greiner.