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Boost Your Income Series #7: How to Retain Your Customers Forever

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Getting customers to patronize your bulk SMS business can be really challenging. But retaining those customers is even more challenging.
And as you know, a business doesn’t thrive by attracting new customers alone; old customers must be retained as well. So, you must jealously retain your clients so that you won’t send them into the waiting hands of the competition.
Here are five proven tips on how you can retain your customers and increase their loyalty towards your bulk SMS business.
1. Offer high quality services
Although seemingly needless to mention, this tip cannot be overemphasized. Only when you offer quality services to your customers will you convince them that they’ve really made the right decision by dealing with you.
Quality services include prompt delivery of ordered bulk SMS units and excellent delivery rates. You’d be shooting yourself in the foot if you deliver your customers’ orders several hours after receiving the notification of payment.
Also, never buy low quality bulk SMS units that have low delivery rates. Granted, such units are much cheaper, but selling them to your customers would kill your business – quickly.
2. Educate your customers
Sometimes, your customers may face problems while trying to place orders, send SMS messages, or using their accounts in other ways. When this happens, always take your time to educate them and help them solve the problem.
Also, empower your customers with information on how to make the most of their SMS units. This will keep them coming back, and there’s even a good chance that they’ll tell other people about your business.
3. Communicate and listen
To keep your customers coming back, you need to build a strong relationship. Only good communication can help you build such.
Always listen to your customers so that you’ll understand their complaints and needs. Welcome their opinions, recommendations, and feedback. And engage with them regularly to let them know about a new product, an event, an special offer, or when you’re facing some problems.
If you can’t handle all customer enquiries yourself, have dedicated, selfless, and friendly customer service staff that will respond promptly to clients’ enquiries and communicate with them effectively.
By communicating effectively with your clients, they’ll feel important, interested, and eager to deal with you each time they need to send bulk SMS.
4. Reward your customers
Rewarding your customers with freebies or discounts is a smart way to keep them glued to your business. You don’t have to go broke on this one. Adding a few SMS units to their orders won’t hurt. Better yet, give them discounts on large orders. They’ll keep coming back for more. (Who doesn’t want freebies and discounts?)
5. Maintain a good reputation
Nothing repels old customers faster than dwindling quality of service. Keep in mind that your customers will most likely remain loyal to your business as long as you maintain a good reputation.
But the moment your customer service staff start becoming hostile, or your SMS units start failing to deliver, or you start delaying the delivery of customer orders, your reputation will start to suffer, and your loyal customers will start considering your rivals.

So, if you want to retain your customers after attracting them in the first place, keep these five tips in mind, and implement them religiously.

7 Comments

  • Reply
    Enstine Muki
    June 1, 2013 at 5:28 pm

    Communicate and listen – feedback is an important element of success.

    It’s difficult to think some businesses don’t care about this. It’s a shock and I think such should read this post Peter

    Have a fun-filled weekend

    • Reply
      Peter
      June 1, 2013 at 5:52 pm

      Thanks Enstine, Businesses and Clients are like two parties in a relationship. The moment you stop paying attention, the other party starts to drift away

  • Reply
    Babanature
    June 2, 2013 at 12:43 am

    Hello Peter,
    What a nice and educative post you have here. I will be going with your last step “maintaining a good reputation”. With this, you can gain trust and with trust, you can achieve the achievable. Thanks

    • Reply
      Peter
      June 3, 2013 at 5:09 pm

      Thanks a lot & Glad you liked it,

  • Reply
    Vijesh
    June 3, 2013 at 6:30 am

    Hi Peter,
    Retaining customers is a great task as it requires few good moves like you have mentioned in the article like offering high quality service. If our service is good and the support team is responsive within 24 or 12 hours then the customer would love to retain with our services.staying in touch with newsletters and monthly giveaways will also work fine. And your last point on reputation is must as a bad reputed business is not going to generate any new leads and day by day existing customers are going to switch to a news service.

    Thanks for the share Peter…

  • Reply
    Sergio Felix
    June 15, 2013 at 12:10 am

    Hey Peter,

    I think you have covered all the points I know about customer retention man so all I can add up is to say: your business is “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link” and that applies to our online businesses as well.

    So keep all these points in a very healthy position and you have ensured to have a high satisfaction rate with your customers.

    Sergio

    • Reply
      Peter
      June 17, 2013 at 8:40 am

      Thanks Sergio,
      Very valid point you added there

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