In the modern competitive world, the demand for increased customer service means that businesses are having to go to greater lengths to stand out from the crowd. Here are some simple, cost effective ways to improve your customer focus and increase customer retention.
1. Have a Customer Database
Having a Customer Database is a really important part of building a business and ensuring that your customers get the correct level of service. Tracking their basic information and what they have purchased allows you to track business progress and develop those customers further. Having a customer database means you can quickly call up information about previous purchases, potential upcoming business and booked appointments. Without a good way to track these things you are much less likely to provide a consistent level of customer service and reliability.
2. Respond Quickly
When your customers contact you, It’s important to respond in a timely fashion. Its not necessary to respond in the middle of the night or at weekends, but customers do appreciate a prompt response, even if its just to say that you have received their message and you will get back to them soon.
Here’s a good article from Toister solutions, which describes the expectations on response time from different age groups. https://www. toistersolutions.com/blog/2018/4/15/how-fast-should-a-business-respond-to-an-email. Interestingly, the older generation seem to have the highest expectations for response times to be less than an hour.
3. Make it easy to buy your services
Making it easy to purchase your services is key improving customer satisfaction and sales. It’s a huge barrier to sales for many of your potential customers if they cannot easily buy your services online or locally. You can build your own website and try to market it, but his is expensive and difficult. The best way to make your services easy to buy, is to be enrolled in a marketplace that already has the infrastructure in place to deliver your product to your target market. https://www.nubilo.co.uk/ is a Service Marketplace that provides exactly this.
4. Follow up
“The Secret art of the follow up” is one of the most effective ways to develop your potential customers and increase repeat orders. So much potential business is lost due to a lack of follow up with your customers.
Keeping customers warm by touching base every now and then, or reaching out to them proactively to let them know that they are due for another one of your services is a very effective way to increase sales and increase the revenue from each of your customers. But its important to do this in a way that is not pushy and aggressive or desperate. Using a tool that manages their orders and automatically enrols them for repeat custom at an interval of their choosing is an effective way of getting them to book repeat custom, but leaving the customer feeling in control.
5. Be Accessible
Making your business accessible is an important way to improve customer Service and Customer Focus. This means it needs to be easy for people to find your business, communicate with you and order your services. There are lots of ways you can make your business more accessible. Having a presence on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. But all of these require a lot of effort to build an audience and they are not native marketplace platforms. Ideally you want to use a marketplace platform that makes your business accessible to your target market without you having to invest in lots of advertising and audience building. You also want to be targeting your market based on their location and suitability to your business.
6. Become a Trusted Advisor
As an expert at what you do, it’s a great idea to help and support your current and future customers with advice and experience. Becoming a go-to person for expert advice and guidance is a great way to build trust and develop the client relationship. Answer questions and create a catalogue of guidance for your customers which shows that you know what you are talking about and have the experience and skills to help your customers solve their problems.
7. Anticipate Hidden Needs
As an expert in your chosen business area, you are most likely able to anticipate the hidden needs of your customers and offer them solutions to problems that they may not yet fully have realised were problems at all. Good communication is key and helping your customers where they want it and guiding them where they need it is a sign of great customer service. Respond to requests and provide information that helps your customers realise why they need your business.
8. Make it easy to pay for your services
Modern life is all about convenience and that goes for paying for service in your home too. Customers should be able to pay online and track their orders, even for something as straight forward as window cleaning. Your business needs to be able to supply digital invoices and support a range of online payment options. Nubilo provides this and allows customers to track their payments and re-order through their own customer portal. Give your customers the individualised care they deserve and make it easy for them to consume your business with a Services Market place such as Nubilo.
I hope you enjoyed this Article. There are loads more like it to come as we follow the development of Nubilo.
Nubilo is a “Home Services Marketplace” where you can manage your home or develop your home services business. Nubilo provides Property Asset Management tools for simplifying the management of your home, and Business Management tools to help small businesses grow.
Check out the Nubilo Blog and Help pages for all the latest information on the evolution of the Nubilo Marketplace: https://www.nubilo.co.uk/blog/
Checkout our Latest Articles for tips and tricks to manage your home better: https://www.nubilo.co.uk/articles/
Search our list of trusted service providers: https://www.nubilo.co.uk/services/