The lowdown: Become a beast at customer retention and give the best customer service possible with this Never Lose A Customer Again summary.
There is such an emphasis on gaining new customers in modern business. It almost seems as if the only way to grow is to bring more and more people to your business.
However, if most of those customers are heading straight out the back door, what’s the point.
Customer retention is such an underdeveloped aspect of a lot of businesses, but turning one-time customers into return customers is easier and cheaper than constantly acquiring new customers.
Never Lose A Customer Again shows you how to give incredible customer service and ensure that your one-time customers are lifetime clients.
- Audible Audiobook
- Joey Coleman (Author) – Joey Coleman (Narrator)
- English (Publication Language)
- 04/03/2018 (Publication Date) – Penguin Audio (Publisher)
The three biggest lessons from the book are:
- Many new customers are lost soon after the sale
- The customer journey has three phases
- Happy customers become advocates and refer others
Lesson One: Many new customers are lost soon after the sale
With so much emphasis bringing in new customers, business’ neglect the customers that they already have. With these businesses, their customer care is lacking compared to their lead-generation and sales staff.
No customer service reps get a bonus for the amount of customers they retain, yet sales reps earn a bonus for new customers they bring in.
For you, the best part about this poor quality of customer care is that you don’t have to do anything incredibly special to be better than your competition.
To make sure your customer service is up to scratch, it is important to do the following:
- Be transparent in what you’re offering (lay off the ‘fine print’)
- Have a set on-boarding system (part of which can be automated)
- Be quick to acknowledge new customers’ queries
As you can see, you don’t have to go ‘above and beyond’ with new customers, just treat them well and appreciate their needs.
Lesson Two: The customer journey has three phases
When a new client interacts with your business, they’ll go through three stages.
- Assess: This is where they’re sussing out you and your business. The steps you take here will be crucial in how a client sees your relationship. This is where you can send little thoughtful gifts to your clients. It doesn’t have to be anything special, even sending through an article which you think they’ll find helpful shows that you care.
- Admit: The stage where the client is aware that they have a problem and that your product or service can solve it. This stage is the buyer’s high and helping them celebrate should be a priority. Even a card of congratulations will help. Think of the welcome gift a Real Estate Agent gives to a new home buyer.
- Affirm: Also known as buyers remorse. After the high of the admit stage, there is always a comedown of sorts. Often the customer is feeling unsure of their purchase and potentially starting to second-guess their choices. Follow up with messages that affirm their decision to purchase.
Knowing the stages of buying and how to handle them are key to customer satisfaction.
Lesson Three: Happy customers become advocates and refer others
The best part of having a great customer experience is that loyal customers quickly become brand ambassadors.
Think about every time you’ve had a great customer experience and told your mates about it.
Yet, there is scope to get even more referrals in your business, rather than hoping customers tell others.
With customers who you already have a great relationship with, try offering bonuses and prizes for referrals.
These are two guidelines when offering referrals:
- Don’t offer too early as it shows you’re looking to move on to the next customer quickly
- Make sure the reward fits the product or service. If you’re a Hummer dealership and you offer a $5 gift-card is worthless and shows how little you know about the power of referrals and the power of your customer relationship.
Every time a customer refers a friend, they’re customer lifetime value doubles, so treat it as such.
My Personal Takeaway
I love what this book preaches.
To be great at customer service and great at retention you just need to be better than your crappy competition.
As you can see, the bar isn’t high to retain customers. Simply have transparent offers and treat people well… it isn’t that hard.
Put it into action
Rather than constantly send out emails, on occasion, send out snail mail.
For example, if you have a monthly newsletter, you can post it to your customers instead of sending it via email where it will get lost in the sea of the recipient’s inbox.
Sending the occasional letter will put you above the other countless businesses that email blast their customers.
You should consider buying this book if…
Any person who manages their own business or is responsible for customer care.
Or, read our other business book summaries.
Thanks!
Vince
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a Swedish university student, marketing professional, and life-long learner. Here at BookSummaryClub I summarize my favorite non-fiction books into easily digested posts. Hope you like what you’re reading!
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