For every business, the Customer is always King. Why? Well, without customers, your business or brand might as well not exist!
This is why it is very saddening to realize that you’re losing customers for your business. It’s a different blow when you’re not getting new customers but when you start to lose existing customers then something could be VERY wrong.
What could the problem be?
You have to realize that how you respond to and behave around your customers will affect your business on a large scale.
Customer service is 70% when it comes to making a sale, it doesn’t matter how good your product is if your customer service is crappy, your customers won’t buy it.
auntyronke
Realize that most customers may not tell you what their dissatisfaction with your brand or service is, they just silently stop patronizing you and may even convince their friends not to buy from you – creating a bad reputation for your business without you even knowing why. So it is very important that you task yourself with finding out what your customers think of your service.
Here are 4 major reasons why your customers might be leaving to your competitors –
1. You do not treat them well:
Like I always say, your customers are gold and should be treated as such. A customer who feels like he or she is being treated poorly will definitely NOT come back to patronize you.
How do you treat your customers? You should treat them the same way you would expect to be treated if you were a customer – with respect and a listening ear so they know that you actually care, no unnecessary familiarity but utmost professionalism.
No customer you treat well will willingly go to your competitor! Even if you happen to be out of stock, they would rather wait for you than go to your competitor. That is how brand loyalty is bred, by good customer service.
2. Your product or service is bad:
The ultimate customer service is simply a product that works, it’s not just about receiving complaints and working on them. In fact, if your products work well, the less complaints you’ll receive. Your product itself is what will guarantee the ultimate satisfaction of your customers and keep them coming back. Nobody likes to spend their money without seeing the worth.
Imagine seeing a lot of adverts about a particular product and finally getting convinced enough to try it out only for you to be disappointed? That feeling of disappointment is what your customers feel when you give them a substandard product or your service does not meet the hype of what you promised your customers.
Before you even begin to advertise or promote your product you have to make sure that it works and can actually do what it is designed to so that your promises of what it can do will not come across as fake.
3. Your customers have started patronizing your competitors:
It is bad enough that you are losing customers but what is worse is if you notice your former customers patronizing your competitors. It is simply a pointer that they are doing something right that you are not or that your brand is lacking something. It can even be a pointer to growing dissatisfaction of your customers due to one reason or the other. Yes, even customers sometimes boycott or cancel a particular business if they are dissatisfied with the service.
If this happens to you, you must take steps to find what the reason is and fix it quickly so that you can stop losing customers and if possible, get the lost ones back.
4. You don’t reach out to old customers:
Customers do not always intentionally leave, sometimes they just forget that they have patronized you before. You have to admit that you might have gotten really good products or services from a brand but couldn’t go back because you forgot their name, right?
It is a known fact that existing customers make up to 80 % of overall sales so why aren’t you reaching out to your existing customers?
This is why as a business owner, you must take it upon yourself to run your business in a way that makes it very easy for customers to remember you, like with an eShop. You must also reach out to your customers, for example, collecting their emails and sending sales offers, discounts and even holiday greetings just to remind them that you’re still very much around.
In any of these cases, you have to take steps to correct your mistakes so that your business can attract and retain more customers. Remember, Customer is King.
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