Keeping customers is more important than getting new customers.
After a customer pays you it is your duty to make sure your product works for them. A lot of times, I pay for a product, it just doesn’t work, and I give up. Also the amount is so low (under $30) that I don’t want to go through the hassle of getting a refund. There is absolutely no way I will sign up again for your product.
I’m a big believer in SaaS so recurring customers are built into my business model. However, almost all businesses rely on repeat business. For example coffee shops (Starbucks), lawyers, big box retailers (Best Buy), iPhone games (Tiny Wings), and almost any business that wants to stay in business needs repeat business.
Some companies do this really well. They follow up with you and ask about your experience. They ask simple questions like “Did you like our service?” or sometimes even more specific questions like “Did your file send successfully for your last campaign?”
Even generic survey/question asking for feedback is better than nothing.
Other companies (most) don’t even think of asking. They think that the sale is over as soon as the first sale is over. Time to move on and impress the next customer. NO!, the sale is never over. Ask for feedback, improve your products, keep that customer coming again, again. That is the key to building a successful customer focused billion dollar company.
wow Rishi! This is such a passionate blog post – more like these please.
I agree – the worst though is those 30 question surveys. I always want to fill it out but then I give up half way through.
I find it a fine line between too much spam vs useful interaction.
A friend of mine has a service called Vero (getvero.com). It allows non-programmers to create event triggered drip feed marketing. We are currently setting this up now and would be interesting to find the right balance without annoying too many customers in the meantime.
Any best practices we should be aware of?
Hi Jindou,
Thanks for the comment. I really like GetVero – kudos on them in figuring out a great problem to solve.
The best practice is to make your emails action based if possible. The highest clicked email is always the one right after you sign up or do something on your website. People don’t mind getting emails right after they have interacted with your website.
I don’t think the right question is “How Many”. Facebook emails me 40+ times a day. The real question to ask “What is my customer/user interested in and how can I email them about it?” If you are emailing without reason it is spammy. The key is to make them matter. Here are some examples:
1. A special savings discount expiring
2. A new feature
3. A lowered price point
4. A case study about a specific feature
5. Tips on how to use your product (based on activity on the website)
Let me know what you think,
Rishi
This is a very accurate and succinct explanation of the benefits – thank you.
I worked for a large company and it took a lot of trial and error but we eventually found that asking for customer feedback (in a customer-friendly way: short, fast and simple) was the single biggest factor in helping us improve customer retention, and it helped us achieve consistent year-on-year improvements in customer satisfaction.
I’ve written a couple of blog posts about my more recent experience of following up on these findings – I hope they help:
http://blog.customersure.com/2012/02/29/the-3-golden-rules-of-requesting-customer-feedback/
http://blog.customersure.com/2012/11/13/4-surprises-when-you-implement-a-customer-feedback-system/