Consumers have more options than ever these days, so don’t give them an excuse to visit your competitors.
Here are three common customer turnoffs, according to Small Business Computing.
Don’t over-promise and under-deliver. Know what you can reasonably deliver – and don’t promise more than that. Avoid misrepresentations and false claims, even if it’s on something as simple as delivery time. And by all means, avoid excessive hype – you may gain short-term sales with breathless marketing, but you’ll lose long-term customers when your product or service fails to live up to claims.
Give customers multiple ways to contact you – and be sure to respond. These days, customers have a variety of preferences for how they want to contact you – by phone, web, mobile devices, email, in person, snail mail – so be sure your customers can reach you by their preferred means. And when they do contact you, respond. Create template responses that can be easily personalized, and acknowledge the reason why the customer contacted you. Involve, a UK employee engagement company, notes that half of customers are likely to cancel a service if they feel a company agent is reluctant to help them.
Don’t ignore existing customers in pursuit of new ones. Gartner claims that a 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by 25% to 125%, so reward your existing customers with special offers and other loyalty perks. Let them know you appreciate them.
Adapted from The Top 3 Mistakes that Drive Away Customers at Small Business Computing.