It is a shocking result from the Harvard Business Review that 68% of customers leave because they just don’t think you care. It’s not that you have done anything wrong. It is not that you have annoyed them. They just don’t think that you care, so they leave. (There is a good article on this here.)

In the same review they found that by just cutting your customer loss rate by 2% is equivalent to decreasing your costs by 10%!

2% reduction in customer loss is equivalent to decreasing your costs by 10%

Imagine telling your board (or spouse, or self) that you had managed to cut your business costs by 10%. That would be a pretty good feeling.

The even better news is that many of these tips can be done for little or no money!

First, keep in contact with your clients/customers. Let them know about the developments you have going on. They might be boring to you, but if the only time they hear from you is when you send an invoice then you are not sending a good impression. Worst in my in box is an invoice with a subject line that looks like a sales hook. Open it up in expectation and there is the demand for money. Leaves a bad taste.

Second, let them know how you are getting on with your current project. You may be thinking, ‘it’s not going well, I’d rather not let them know’ or ‘It’s going well, so I don’t want to bother them.’ The general experience is that if you don’t communicate with your client, they will assume that you are doing nothing.

They will feel lonely and isolated.

It’s a sad position to be in.

We know that a baby can die just from a lack of touches. The same is true of a ’touch’ to a client.

A One to One Meeting

The premium method of communication is to meet with the client. Arrange a time and go and talk with them. This is great for  your premium clients, but it is not always necessary or desirable. (It uses up a lot of time from your client that they could be using to make more money.)

A Phone Call

A phone call can be welcome. Let them know that you are thinking and ask how things are going. If you know that they have problems, you can sort them out! If you don’t know, the client will just fester with them. Don’t forget to ask, ‘is this a convenient time for us to talk?’ at the beginning of the call or you can leave them grinding their teeth thinking, ‘when will this person get off my phone.’

Just by asking how things are going on, you will have them ask for more. This can easily turn into sales.

An Email

An individual email that is mentioning progress and asking how things are going can be well received.

However, individual emails and phone calls take time. How about mass emailing?

Just because an email is a ‘mass email’ doesn’t make it spam. Spam is email that is either unwanted or excessive. In crafting your emails, make them personable and personal. Put in things like their real name. Ensure that the sections that appear in the email are relevant to the person. There are a variety of products that allow you to send the same template to lots of people… but the email that goes out depends on the interests (segment) of the recipient. We have our favourite, if you would like to find out more.

You can take this even further by basing the emails sent out on the behaviour of the client.

Our top product can send out different emails depending on whether people attend events (or not)… and can follow them up with different emails depending on whether they open the email, click on different links, etc. This can give a truly personal journey (if set up correctly). We can help you with all this.

Don’t be a stranger!