Retaining Customer Loyalty
In my last blog post I spoke about the value of giving good service, and the benefit of giving away something free to your customers or clients.
Today I am going to share with you some tips to reduce customer dissatisfaction and retain customer loyalty.
Often overlooked, one way to reduce customer dissatisfaction is to make it easy for your customers or clients to voice their concerns and complaints.
It seems so obvious yet often times a web site has a contact form, details of phone numbers and mail addresses in which people can very easily make contact with the site owner. However many times I have found it extremely difficult to find the link, and sometimes not at all.
Contact information is a show of credibility and in some way eases the emotion, knowing that their grievance can be at the least delivered or heard.
Many Internet marketing sites and “get rich quick’ web sites fail to address the needs of the customer by excluding completely any means of contact. This in itself would set of alarm bells – wouldn’t you think?
In a brick and mortar business, many, many business fail to advise a means of customer grievance. A simple sign outlining the grievance policy, located where customers could clearly read it, would encourage those who have a complaint to feel comfortable enough to come forward. And that’s precisely what you want.
Rather than recount their grievance to every second person they speak with, you have an opportunity to resolve the issue before it impacts your business.
A good idea is to have a well documented grievance “form”, taking all of the particulars – it shows you are interested in the matter.
Likewise a form on a website asking for similar details is a must. Even better you can add a component to your website to handle all your customer support.
Known as a “Help Desk”, this is an efficient add-on to a website which logs everything under a numbered “ticket”. The addition of system reports enable you to follow up disputes without loosing track, or worse forgetting all about it.
Ensuring your business addresses customer grievances or disputes before they happen will enable you to look at all of the possible reasons why someone would complain, and address those issues before they happen. Or in the event they do happen, you will have a well documented procedure to follow to ensure a satisfactory resolution.
Another way to avoid customer dissatisfaction is to ensure you don’t over-state the benefits of your product. Nothings worse than being led to believe that a product or a service made certain claims, and on those strengths you purchased, only to find out the product/service is far short of the claims. That’s just asking for trouble.
If you’re going to make a claim it better stack up.
By all means use persuasive sales copy, after all – the mere fact you are in an online business requires emotive, benefit driven sales copy. We’re not face-to- face.
Adding a 100% money back guarantee will also go a long way in increasing your sales online. A guarantee to give all their money back if they are not satisfied is as good as a “no risk” transaction, and your site visitors/customers feel a lot more at ease undertaking the transaction = more sales.
Anything less than a money back guarantee I would consider to be unacceptable if you want to do business online. The fact that you have the money before they have the product is the very reason why some people refuse to shop online.
If you have confidence in your product then it shouldn’t be an issue. The chances of someone having to claim on it are very slim.
The benefits far outweigh the negatives.
