– Keep Your Existing Customers Happy and Loyal
By Lanese Barnett
Did you know it can cost five to 25 times the amount to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing customer? For example, every 10,000 members in the car wash unlimited wash plan is a $300,000 churn problem. This becomes a $3 million problem if you have 100,000 members. Keeping your existing customers happy and loyal is more important than ever to maintain and grow your brand value.
As the economy continues to experience lingering headwinds from factors like inflation, rising interest rates, and bank failures, now is the time to focus on improving operational efficiencies and delivering an exceptional customer experience. Gaining a deeper understanding of your customer can help you reach them and better yet, keep them.
CAPTURING THE VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER
Generally speaking, the Voice of the Customer (VoC) involves the process of gathering and understanding customer feedback, with the goal of crafting and deploying customer responses that directly improve the product and customer experience. Customers like to be in control and like to communicate on their terms. The method by which they communicate will vary across demographics and regions.
To better reach your customer, you need to start by assessing your current communication methods. Four questions to ask yourself:
1. How are you communicating with your customers?
2. Is it on their terms?
3. Are you easy to contact?
4. Are you easy to do business with?
Successful car wash operators are communicating with customers through many touchpoints. They listen, they are responsive, consistent, and problem solvers. Here are some communication channels for you to consider:
1. On-site conversations
2. Off-site channels such as voice, texting, and e-mail
3. Social media engagement
4. Monitoring and responding to online customer reviews
5. Targeted surveys at different times during the customer journey
6. Using feedback forms, often through the Contact Us page on your website
In today’s data-driven environment, capturing and analyzing feedback helps you understand the VoC and their sentiment toward your brand. When you can consistently collect robust data, you can set trigger points and detect patterns outside the norm. You can also incorporate surveys to help quantify the customer satisfaction rate — a marker that they will remain loyal to your brand and net promoter score — how likely a customer is to recommend you to others. There are various ways this can be done, and often marketing companies you work with will offer these services.