Cold calls and emails, intense marketing campaigns, meeting new people, perfecting your sales pitch — building a customer base for any small business is no easy feat. But once you get over those hurdles and finally acquire new customers, the hardest part is over, right? Not so fast.
When it comes to running a successful business, keeping customers — also known as customer retention — is just as important, if not even more so, than customer acquisition. That’s because repeat customers can help increase your return on investment by spending 67% more than a new customer. What’s more, they are five times more likely to purchase from you again.
Armed with the right strategies and the right tools, you can successfully grow and maintain your small business with the right type of customers. That’s why we’re sharing four easy tips for customer retention and how FlexBooker scheduling software can help every step of the way.
1. Make customer experience your number one priority
More and more businesses are investing their time and money on customer experience, as it can make or break your success. After all, you need customers to purchase your services, and if they’re happy with their experience, they’ll continue investing in your services over and over again.
Today, most of the customer journey happens online, which means you must make their experience on your website seamless. Just one bad experience — even for a loyal customer — will prevent them from doing business with you ever again. If that bad experience happens on your website, you may lose the opportunity to retain customers.
The FlexBooker widget easily integrates with your website, so customers aren’t sent to a separate, unfamiliar website or page to schedule their services or appointments. It even detects the type of device users are on, helping build a positive user experience from the very beginning.
2. Offer online booking
You juggle a lot of things for your business, and your customers do the same. From managing careers, families, and everything else in between, there’s not a lot of time left to schedule appointments — especially over the phone. One survey found that 70% of customers prefer to book online, as they tend to run into several frustrations over the phone like long wait times and inconvenient hours. That’s when the convenience of online booking becomes crucial for customer retention.
With FlexBooker, your customers and patients can schedule, reschedule, or cancel their appointment online in just a few clicks. Whether it’s through your website or a custom-built landing page, they can easily book your services without having to take time out of their busy schedules to make a phone call. According to the survey above, online booking can even convince people to change their service providers based solely on this feature.
3. Implement streamlined communication
With more and more people booking services online, communicating with them the same way can be key to getting them through the door over and over again. One of the best ways to keep in touch with your clients is through FlexBooker’s automated SMS and email feature. With it, you can:
- Text and email appointment confirmations
- Send appointment reminders and follow-ups
- Allow customers to make changes in real-time through texting
This type of streamlined communication can help ensure customers actually follow through with their appointments. In fact, patients who received a phone call reminder answered only 30-60% of the time, but those who received an SMS reminder had a 97-99% percent response rate.
This feature also provides you with convenience, too. If you need to make changes to your schedule — whether it’s one appointment or an entire day — FlexBooker handles everything for you. It automatically lets your customers know about the changes and allows them to reschedule at the same time
4. Add a personal touch
Many client relationships can be cultivated online or through text messages, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get a little personal. While you may not even see or talk to your customers until you meet face-to-face, you can still lay the groundwork for retention by offering personalized communication. By doing so, messages have an average of 46% higher open rates than other marketing messages.
FlexBooker allows you to customize your texts, emails, and booking forms in any way you want. So, instead of providing templated messaging that sounds dull and dry, add your personality to it to strengthen your branding while making your customers feel unique and important. Add their first names to messages you send them and create responses that feel real and conversational.
Retain your best customers with FlexBooker
Retaining customers is a challenge for any small business, but is well worth the effort. And part of that effort includes a powerful, easy-to-use scheduling tool that provides a positive customer experience while helping them get through your doors.
Explore all the features of FlexBooker and how it can help your small business reach its full potential. Then, get started in just minutes with a 14-day free trial to experience it for yourself.