Customer Service = Customer Retention?

It is well-known that customer retention is vital to your business. Customer acquisition costs as much as ten times customer retention, while retained customers spend 50% more per visit on average. Generating customer loyalty and retaining customers is possibly the best investment you can make. Just as COVID presented a challenging environment for dry cleaners and wash & fold operators, the recovery presents an opportunity to grow your business.

Though there are many contributing factors to high customer retention, the most effective is superior customer service. Customer service is designed to create a positive customer experience in order to increase customer loyalty, and ultimately, long-term retention.

These tactics will help to provide a great customer experience and improve your retention metrics:

1. Follow-Up. Following up with customers to understand their experience, to ask why a customer hasn’t used your service lately, or even to send handwritten notes on anniversaries and birthdays, can go a long way in showing customers you care about them and their business. With modern tools like Starchup’s automated email marketing, you can follow up without lifting a finger. Older methods work, too: consider reviewing your top 25-50 customers and calling them in light of the recovery. Tell them you appreciate their business and loyalty and you’d love to have them back when it’s time. Make 2-3 of these calls a day and track these follow-ups in a dry cleaning and wash & fold software like Starchup.
2. Pay attention to complaints and compliments. Complaints highlight weaknesses in the customer experience you provide and an opportunity to improve your service. Compliments, conversely, help to reinforce where your company excels. Create a process for following up on complaints, and follow up with top customers personally on a phone call. When customers compliment you, get details, request an online review, and praise relevant staff. You will find out great information about your business and you’ll likely retain those valuable customers.
3. Make your service memorable. Customers become fans of a business when they remember something remarkable it did for them. Quick problem resolution, anticipating needs, and going above and beyond their expectations will create a memory.
4. Engage your new customers. Create automated email campaigns to tell your story to new customers. Let them know how long you’ve been in business, introduce them to your team, and identify where you give back to the community through special causes that you support personally or as a business.These each create human touchpoints that resonate. Businesses that are humanized and with a personal touch generate greater loyalty and make it more difficult to switch to a competitor.

Finally, a strong CRM software like Starchup's Dry Cleaning & Wash & Fold POS is the best way to track customer issues, easily communicate with customers, and provide a great customer experience. The more information you retain about your customer relationships, the more customers you will retain for you business.