One of the largest marketing expenses that field service businesses have is customer acquisition. So when you manage to land a new customer, you don’t want them running away to the competition. Keep in mind that increasing your customer retention rates by just 5% can boost your profitability from 25% to 95%.
Plus, it costs on average five times less to retain a customer than to secure a new one. Considering this part of running your business is so important, read through this blog to better prepare yourself to turn a one-off gig into a lifelong customer!
Reassurance Is Key
How are customers and chihuahuas similar? They both tend to be nervous creatures. Customers will constantly ask themselves questions like:
- Was this service worth my hard-earned money?
- Could I find better value for a cheaper price somewhere else?
- Does my tradie exactly know what they’re doing?
Fortunately, there’s a simple formula for reassuring your customers – just send a single email that includes these four easy steps!
Step 1: Teach the customer a lesson
No, not in a malicious way. Give your customers the gift of knowledge that they would not have otherwise known or sought out on their own. This positions you as an authority and helps build trust.
Step 2: Re-sell yourself to them
Even once you’ve made the sale, reinforce your value to them. Remind customers how you deliver superior service and why they made a good choice. This helps validate their choice and reduces any feeling of buyer’s remorse.
Step 3: Offer them a bonus
Everyone likes free or cheaper things, and why shouldn’t they? Add bonus value to your services by throwing in a discount for repeat jobs or offering a discount around the time of your customer’s birthday. With a creative and personalised idea, your customers will feel valued and set you up for more jobs from them in the future. Naturally, this increases the odds of them staying with you for life.
Step 4: Set the stage for the future
Communicate to the customer how excited you are that they chose you and want the opportunity to work with them in the future. Set the stage for a long-term relationship from the first visit. Reinforce how you’re there to support them for the long haul, whenever they may need you.
Provide Top-Notch Service
None of these strategies work if you don’t provide excellent customer service. It sounds so simple, but under-promising and over-delivering still makes a stellar impression. Looking to dazzle your customers? Do what you say you’ll do when you say you’ll do it. Avoid these top 5 customer complaints:
- Long appointment windows
- Technicians that don’t understand the problem
- Late or missed appointments
- Unfriendly or unprofessional tradies
- Issues not resolved on the first visit
Every interaction with a customer is a chance to demonstrate why they should do business with you or call you next time they need service. Don’t miss an opportunity to show how much you value their business. Make them feel safe (COVID compliance) and take care to manage appearance and behaviour. If you put these ideas into practice, it’s bound to pay off.
In fact, 93% of customers say they’re likely to do repeat business with businesses that offer excellent customer service. For business owners and managers, remember that your tradies and other employees are your customers, too. Treat your employees well, so they’ll treat the customer even better.
Go the Extra Mile
It’s often the little touches that help create an emotional connection for customers. For instance, send a thank you note or a birthday card to make customers feel special and ensure they remember you for the next time. It can also be as simple as training your employees to write down a few notes about the job and the client. This way, you can start effectively building relationships and show that you genuinely care about what’s going on.
Did your client get a new car or do their kids like to play football? Ask how these things are going and you’ll quickly discover that your interactions feel much more natural. Having this comfortable rapport may cause them to recommend your services to their friends and family. Anything you can do to make it easier for customers to do business with you — such as using the FieldPulse app — helps with customer retention.
Follow Up
After a service call, follow up to make sure everything went well. If there’s an issue, resolve it as soon as possible. This helps reinforce that you value them and want to ensure you’re delivering the best service possible.
Follow the Formula
Customer retention is the key to growing a business. When you can keep existing customers happy — and add new ones on top of that — that’s how you grow. If you’re losing customers every month, you’re swimming upstream just to stay afloat. To improve your customer retention, be sure to follow these four steps:
- Teach your customer a lesson
- Re-sell yourself
- Offer them a bonus
- Set the stage for the future
Always provide exceptional customer service and go the extra mile to create a memorable experience and emotional connection with your business. Finally, follow up with your customers to make sure they’re satisfied. It’s a formula that works!
Take Charge of your Business with FieldPulse
If you’re a busy tradie who’s got a full schedule every day, it can be tough to keep up with all your customers. But, running a field service business is made a lot easier when you use a streamlined business management app like FieldPulse.
Using FieldPulse, you can organise customer information, schedule jobs, process invoices, communicate with clients and much more, all with just a few taps! Schedule a free demo and stop wasting time on filling out paperwork and time consuming admin tasks!
