- 1% die
- 3% move away
- 5% follow a friend’s or relative’s recommendation 9% find an alternative they perceive to be better quality or value
- 14% are dissatisfied with the products or service
- And a massive 68% of people leave a business because of… indifference. They take their business elsewhere simply because they do not feel valued.
Since a lot of time, money and effort are spent acquiring new clients, if existing clients leave you because of indifference, you might as well be flushing £50 notes away!
Too often the only way for a customer to leave feedback is to go online and post a negative review. Head off that negative word of mouth and encourage more happy customers to leave reviews by making it really easy.
Give out lots of feedback and comment forms – and don’t forget that checkbox that says, “Yes, I give permission to use my comments in your marketing materials.”
Get feedback from customers, friends, business associates, employees:
- Try to find out who is seeing your message and how they are seeing it
- When you first start working with a new client/customer ‘seed’ from the outset that you will be asking them for a brief testimonial when the work is completed. Don’t feel embarrassed to ask, and remember to do it!
- Thank clients for WOM referrals and recommendations. If someone is sending you lots
- of referrals, send a small, quality gift as a thank you.
- Is your business appropriate for a loyalty scheme to be introduced?
- If someone has used your service, you could put together a brief questionnaire, perhaps 6 questions. And if it’s only a quick transaction you had with the client, don’t include lots of ‘subjective’ opinion questions.
I received one last week and after 5 minutes I was only 37% through. I zapped it away and emailed back and said it was too long! The power of stats from such surveys is powerful, though. “XX% of customers reported being 99% satisfied with our work” – for example.
Always be willing to tweak and tune your offerings as you go, based on feedback.
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