With your business expanding with the day and the increasing number of new ‘converts’ joining your fold, it is natural and human to be excited and treating the new customers with a warm welcome and a five-star treatment with special attention.
But successful organizations ensure that it is not the last time that those customers are getting that heartfelt treatment. They deserve it each and every time they come back, time and over again.
This realization of treating your old customers well comes with an experienced business sense. The customer, who comes to you for the first time, comes with an ‘experiment’ approach and may not be offering you all the business he has. But when someone decides to come back again, he is surely satisfied with your services and for sure has decided to come with a deep pocket. You are surely not naïve to not to identify this opportunity that has decided to knock again.
It is for some reason that the old customers are called ‘Loyal’ customers and here are some tips to win and maintain that loyalty.
Stick to Basic Etiquettes
We have been raised on the etiquette of greeting all and one with a smile on our face every time they visit our home. This comes in handy in a business environment too. No one likes to be taken for granted. A warm welcome every time at your front office will make the customers come back. So please remember that teaching from your parents and put it to good use.
Identify Loyalty
Everyone in your organization should be aware of the loyal customers, especially your front office staff. It is a good idea to create a list of the ‘loyalists’ and circulate it. Loyal customers should feel privileged and honored. They are the ones who have realized the worth of your services, put their faith in you, and have kept you in business.
Pop the memory pills and remember names
It is a proven fact of human psychology that everyone loves to hear their name and feel respected to be identified by name. It boosts their sense of identity. Need we say more. Thus, get popping some pills and remember your customers by name. In fact, it should be the most important KPI of the front desk too.
Be All Ears Always
Listen, Listen and Listen to your customer without any preconceived notions and be open to welcome your customer any hour of the day (Not literally, though at least every working hour of the day). It is a common practice to label some customers as ‘time eaters who keep coming back with some weird and specific requirements that may not be on your menu. But don’t forget that every time they visit you, they come with a prospect and their ‘weird’ requirements may be genuine from their business perspective. Try to find a window of opportunity and help them with a minimum-possible solution. In any case, you are going to add a few more dollars to your balance sheet.
Your door should be wider than the competitor’s
Always keep in mind that customers are loyal to you only till you are providing value along with courtesy and due respect. Your competitors have an eye on all your customers and they will not have moral pangs while snatching them away at your slightest slip-up. You would surely not like to lose out a customer to a competitor with a standard of services lower than yours only because you failed to treat them in a way that they deserved to be, being your loyal customers.
To end this all, I would leave you with an old Indian saying that we all must have heard many times.
“ NayaNau Din, PuranaSau Din”
(New is new only for few days, Old is there to stay)