myRetailer.ca

Keep Loyal Customers Loyal by Being Dependable and Stocking Essential Items

From Flickr - avilon_music

Become dependable to your customers in the services and products you offer and you’ll go a long way to keep your customers loyal to your company.

Let me illustrate my point.

A few weeks ago I needed a car wash and drove to the local car wash I’ve gone to for years. I parked the truck, walked inside to purchase my car wash only to find out that they ran out of soap for the touchless car wash. Can you imagine? The entire car wash shut down, because they ran out of soap? As I walked out frustrated, I was thinking to myself; “How can you run out of soap at a car wash? If it was my car wash, I’d always make sure that I have at least a month’s supply at all times. Wow much can it cost to inventory soap, especially if you run a busy car wash?!” (more…)

How can you leverage ‘FREE’ to gain customers and grow business?

I recently read Free – The Future of a Radical Price, a fascinating book by Chris Anderson that really got me thinking. In his book, Anderson goes into great detail about how certain businesses, especially in today’s digital age, have built entire businesses models based on a single price – $0. Think of companies like Google and Facebook, or even free iPhone apps and free ebooks, what do they all have in common? They give away their core product for free.

If you consider an author or consultant, they may give away free partial or full ebooks on their site (as I do on Retailer’s Roadmap to Success), in efforts to gain more readers who will become familiar with their work, in hopes that they will turn into paying customers by purchasing an upgrade, the full book, or perhaps a speaking engagement at some point in the future. (more…)

Enhance Customer Experience, Raise Prices and Increase Profitability

Take the Retailer’s Roadmap challenge and work your word of mouth advertising by enhancing your customer’s shopping experience in your store, and then increase profitability through strategically raising some of your prices.

If you provide the best shopping experience for your customers, then your customer satisfaction will go up, word of mouth will travel and you can justify higher prices.

The Retailer’s Roadmap Challenge is a 3 step challenge:

1. Decrease your overall advertising budget by 20%
   • Redirect your remaining budget mostly toward direct marketing campaigns.
2. Invest the savings into the shopping experience
   • Dollar for dollar, take the money you saved from your marketing budget and invest it into your people, your facilities and your merchandising in order to enhance your customer shopping experience. (more…)

Thanks + Explanation + Apology + Next Steps = Customer Thank You Formula

A complaint is a gift – follow these steps to address customer complaints and retain customer loyalty by following these steps.

In their book, A Complaint Is a Gift: Recovering Customer Loyalty When Things Go Wrong, authors Janelle Barlow and Claus Moller spell out a Thank You Formula to follow when you do receive a complaint. I think this is brilliant and will diffuse any possible negative situation and turn it into a positive experience. (more…)