Your current home business customers are gold both in terms of their future buying power and because of their ability to refer potential clients to your enterprise. Because of their significance, monetarily speaking, they should be treated as though the future of your business depends on them because, in reality, it does. How you treat your current clientele will be reflected in your future sales and profits as well as the length of your customer list; so in this case size really does matter.
Follow-up is a key component to any successful customer retention campaign. Just because someone has purchased your product or service this doesn’t mean that the customer service aspect of the sales process is complete; on the contrary your client relations strategy should now be kicking into over drive. Once you’ve attracted someone and sold them on your home business you now need to turn them into loyal and life long patrons.
This process should begin with a simple follow-up, after the initial purchase, thank you letter. By sending each new client a sincere thank you for becoming a part of your business and by emphasizing how vital they are to your overall success they will feel appreciated which will go a long way toward creating a long term patron for your enterprise.
In this letter you could add a customer feedback form asking questions related to their overall buying experience. You could ask for suggestions for improving the process and ask about their experience with their new purchase relating to performance and whether it’s doing everything you claimed it would. This advice could be used to improve the situation for future patrons.
In this follow-up you could include another offer with an emphasis on it being for a limited time only. This creates a sense of urgency for your clients which may entice them to purchase again. This is a great technique for promoting add-ons to their original product which can improve upon their new merchandise.
In your letter offer some assurance that they made the correct decision by doing business with your home based enterprise. Emphasize the quality you offer and provide some statistics as to the performance of the product they purchased as well as written testimonials from current satisfied customers. This helps instill a feeling of satisfaction in your new client that they made the right buying decision and helps to dispel any buyer’s remorse which may be present.
Include in your correspondence a discount of 15% or 20% toward their next purchase as a show of appreciation for their business. This helps create loyalty and encourages them to buy again from your business.
You could also encourage your new clients to refer their friends and family members to your online home based business and as an enticement you could offer a free gift for each referral who actually becomes a paying customer.
So as you can see the follow-up serves a three fold purpose. It establishes customer loyalty through customer service and satisfaction as well as encourages your new clients to purchase again while bringing new potential customers to your home based business.