I love cats, but with the kind of job that I have, limiting my time at home to just a couple of hours a day but traveling for like a lifetime keeps me to own one. So when the first feline café, Cat Flower Garden, opened in Taipei in 1998, I frequented the place not just to cosy up a cup of tea but at the same time spend a lazy Saturday with some furry friends. The pet café industry has grown and an array of pet restos can now be found in countries like Japan, Philippines, and the United Kingdom. I am glad that my pet issues were addressed.
It’s easy to convince a friend to take a stray cat home, but knowing your friend’s pet-nursing capabilities may be a different story, just as swiftly finding clients to get interested to outsource a third party recruitment with keeping a steady array of them. One may employ a seamless lead generation process and run a successful campaign but keeping these clients clinging to your data list may require a doubled effort.
Related: The Three-Step Guide to Better Customer Retention
Entrepreneur suggests making your clients happy. It’s the key to keep them for a lifetime. Here are simple ways to create happy smiles on your customers face:
Pay attention and anticipate your clients’ needs.
Get to know their work patterns.
For example, if the client prefers to keep a daily update via email rather than a summative weekly conference, get your notes ready at the end of the day and send it on time.
Consider the client’s day.
A missed appointment could be a lost sale. Adhere to your client’s preferred schedule for meetings and promptly reply to queries.
Prep and Plan.
Your project design should include alternatives and feasible options to avoid losing track of your workflow.
These simple work routines will ease project run. However, the stressing part comes when your customers come to a point where they have to decide whether to continue working with you or not. As the business cliche goes, “it’s easy to find new customers but hard to keep one”.
Related: 7 Tips on How to Manage Time More Effectively
So how do we keep customers for a lifetime? Forbes has these to say:
Know Your Content.
Create a genuine relationship with your clients and enable them to connect with their market, making yourself a strong foundation amongst them. This is one way of telling them that you share their values. It is important that your customers would know that you stand on the same ground with them. Knowing that you have the same goals and represent a single brand will certainly build their trust and confidence.
Related: 12 Tools to Hack Your Content Creation Workflow [Plus Free Content Calendar]
Know Your Company’s Character.
This pertains to a deeper connection between you and your clients by building a business identity and conducting business in such a way that is congruent with how you want to be seen, perceived and understood by your clients. Speak their language by understanding their intellectual, social and professional concepts as this will make your clients see you as a solid part of their group
Know Your Company’s Community.
Take advantage of every channel available for you to connect with your clients. The internet is one of the best platforms that can drive loyalty among people in the community – business to consumer or business to business. Also, a good rapport over the phone is not enough to keep your clients clinging to you but doing things beyond their expectations like taking extra effort on giving them updates on project status or reminders for upcoming events without them asking will open bigger doors of opportunities for a lifetime partnership.
With the utilization of different marketing tactical tools available in the market today, customers can now be easily acquired like drawing kittens with catnip to follow you home, but knowing your content, your company’s character and your community will surely keep them in a steady array like lounging moggies in cat cafes.
