Here’s a quick question: 
What is your attrition rate? For those who have not heard the term before, your attrition rate, is the rate at which you lose customers or clients, (herein called clients.)
Your client base is being actively targeted by your competitors. Your clients are receiving; mail shots, email marketing, advertising and all kinds of offers, from competitors who are desperate to win their business away from you.
Offering great customer service is essential, but if you want to keep their business, it’s also important for you to do the following:
- Do whatever you can, to try and meet as many clients as you can, as often as you can.
- Make sure you are in contact with ALL your clients, even those that you have not done any work with recently. Your great customer service will soon become just a memory and you will slip off their radar, if you do not retain regular contact.
- Pick up the phone from time to time just to see how they are. Email is great, but voice to voice contact is far, far better. It’s an immediate 2 way dialogue. I suggest never letting more than a few weeks go by without a chat, if at all possible.
- DON’T TRY TO SELL THEM ANYTHING. Just connect with them. Find out what’s happening in their world right now.
- If you can’t regularly phone every client, email them something of value (see below.)
- If you have a massive customer list, which it just too big to phone around, drop customers a line and ask for their feedback. Don’t just broadcast your news to them. Ask for their news too.
- Oh, and think before using gimmicks! A marketing guru once told his readers to send chocolate bars to their clients. He was then slammed, after a number of them lost clients, who were diabetic or overweight and thought it was a bad joke at their expense!
Develop an attrition plan
Develop a simple attrition plan, which will ensure you remember to make regular contact with your clients. In brief, you should try and do as much of it face-to-face as possible. If that’s too hard, then use the phone, if you are dealing with many hundreds or with thousands of clients, start a customer-only newsletter. Again, don’t fill it with sales pitches – that’s not good enough. They deserve better than that. Share your news and ask for their news (that’s why its called a newsletter and not a salesletter) and make them a genuine, customer only offer in each issue.
The bottom line here is that the longer you stay out of contact with a client, the less relevant you become to them. The less relevant you become, the easier it will be for your competitors to win their custom from you.
Keep in touch and show them you care.
Other than offering outstanding customer service, what are your tips for retaining your clients / customers business?
Photo credit: Nick J Webb
Excellent post, Jim.
Here’s my build on your excellent topic:
BECOME THE TRUSTED ADVISER
People love working with people who are genuinely interested in them and not just pushing for more business.
Being skilled at adding value to customer relationships during the times when you are not actually doing business together makes it very easy for them to stick with you.
As you get better at contributing to your relationships, people will want to continue doing business with you irrespective of the company they work for.
When this happens, you have elevated the relationship from you as supplier of products/services to you as the trusted adviser in your area of focus and expertise.
Thanks, Jim.
Best to you, Robin
Absolutely right Robin.
So long as you keep that channel open and remain relevant, it’s a lot easier to keep your clients happy.
Thanks for the feedback.
Hi Jim
This post prompted me immediately to mahe two phone calls to clients, just as I was reading your “34 tips” to marketing which I plan to keep open on my computer and read and re-read. Seems for me this is the hardest part, maintaining contact. Thank you for reiterating again and again how important that is.
Hi Yael. Great that you found it so useful. Thanks for letting me know. Feedback like yours is what makes this blogging thing worthwhile
Thank you for this tip.
Jim you’ve a knack for saying exactly what I need to hear exactly when I need to hear it. This is now my primary marketing website.
Thanks Suzanne!
A great post Jim, but just a simple footnote. Some clients prefer asyncronous communication for non-critical messages. As a developer (or engineer) each 3-4 hour block of uninterrupted time is gold to me. Therefore syncronous (phone, visits) contact is a detriment to my work sometimes.
As a manager or executive, I relish syncronous contact and strongly believe in strengthening relationships with customers as friends. Trust is hard to earn and easily lost.
Interesting point Mark – thanks.
If someone makes me feel valued, they stand a better chance of winning and retaining my custom. Personal communications are vastly more effective for that. I get hundreds of emails a day – very few companies take time to actually connect with me.
The rare few that do, stand out and I remember them far more.
Hi Jim,
great article!
I would like to suggest one more thing: Use some sort of CRM application (or a simple text file) to keep track of what was said. I think it is a great way to start the conversation when you say: Hello dear client, last time we talked you said …
In my opinion getting personal with clients is far better than trying to feed them with your sales pitches every time. Don’t always cram your script and sales pitch. Drop by sometimes and ask their well being. I tend to agree with you that staying in touch with them is somehow equivalent to a sale. If you have a large list of customers then you can use social media tools to stay in touch with them. Newsletter sounds fine unless it’s not a sales letter.
You are right Orton!
I personally think that if you make good relation with your customer then it is much easier to gain profit then by increasing your sale without an effective relation with your customer. Because whenever you make some good relation with your customer their will be every possibility that your customer will snatch other person who will become customer as well. I have noticed in allvehiclesdirectory.com which is working on the same thing i.e. building good relation with customer and gaining profit.