How Often Do You Follow Up?

Follow Up Picture by Petiatil at Wikimedia Commons

By following up with your current customers you can generate the feeling that you sincerely care about their wants, success, families and general well being.  You can also follow-up with “prospective” customers and clients, keeping your business name and the specific products and/or services you provide at the front of their thoughts.  Direct mail, newsletters, surveys and special announcements are just a few of the ways you can follow-up and keep in touch with your current and prospective customers and clients. 

About Customer Follow-Up

Some communication forms appear to find customers with a larger appetite for follow-up.  For example, your customers might want to hear from you once a month via an opt-in newsletter and only once a year via the telephone.  To get a feel for the top one to two ways your customers prefer to have you stay in touch with them, consider including a short questionnaire on the back of their receipt.  You can also ask your customers and clients for their email addresses and email them a thank you note after they conduct business with you, visit your website, telephone your company’s customer service department and inquire about one of your products and/or services, etc. 

When you send out thank you notes, list several ways your clients and potential customers can receive updates on sales, specials, discounts and new product lines you offer.  Ask your clients and customers to identify two of the best ways for you to keep them apprised of your offerings and special sales.  To avoid gaining customer disapproval, don’t sell your customers (or potential customers’) contact information.  It might be tempting to do so.  However, people are very intelligent (certainly as intelligent as you and other creative business leaders are); customers may soon connect the fact that they gave you their contact information with the fact that colleges, political organizations and other retailers are suddenly reaching out to them, working to get their business.  Over time, the habit of selling customer contact information could cost you valuable business.  The word could also get out that you sell customer’s private information without asking customers for their permission to do so, certainly not the type of customer appreciation vibe you’d want to create. 

Customer and Client Follow-Up Strategies You Can Use

Because the average consumer might need to see your ads, hear about your products and/or services, etc. 8 to 10 times before she or he decides to exchange money for your products and/or services, if you follow-up with your customers at least once a week, you might notice a larger increase in sales than if you only followed up with customers once a month or once a quarter.   

Below are strategies you can use to follow-up with your customers: 

• Create and distribute a newsletter once a week (You can also send newsletters once a month, just make sure you send them out regularly rather than sporadically; also ensure that you provide interesting, entertaining and valuable information (e.g. feature interviews with industry leaders, product tips) to newsletter subscribers.)
• Host a daily or weekly radio show
• Send thank you postcards to new customers no less than one week after the customers make their initial purchase with you
• During holidays send postcards (electronic or print) to customers
• Craft and send thank you notes to people who contact you to tell you about specific ways they think you can improve your products and/or services (e.g. shorten telephone wait times)
• Telephone customers after your company reaches milestones, thanking the customers for their ongoing support
• Host semi-annual or annual in-person events (e.g. seminars, luncheons) just for your customers
• Highlight comments made by your customers at your website, being sure to highlight new comments daily or weekly so large numbers of customers get noticed
• Mention how much you appreciate your customers during print, radio and television interviews 

Follow-up works.  Getting and keeping in touch with people is a way that politicians get elected.  It’s a way your product sales can increase with each new product release.  By following up with customers and clients you can also increase the amount of word-of-mouth business your company receives. 

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Sources:

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/tips/archives/2010/05/why_regular_follow-up_improves_business_perception.html (Bloomberg Business Week: Why Regular Follow-Up Improves Business Perception)