Repeat business

It is important to look after the customers you already have. It costs between six to thirty times more to get a new customer than it does to service and maintain the satisfaction and loyalty of an existing customer. If you can keep your customers happy and thus increase your customer retention by 5%, and you could increase your profits by at least 25%.

Customer service is about meeting needs and exceeding expectations. Your customers need to know what you will do for them, and then you need to plan how you can give them added value to exceed their expectations, so they return to you for their training. Service standards, Customer Charter, service level agreements are all ways of letting the customer know what they can expect from you. In the case of the service level agreement, it is by negotiation that levels of service are agreed as to what you can offer but also what you expect from them in return.

A customer’s experience of your organisation can be influenced by a number of different staff e.g. estate staff, marketing, front line staff or operational delivery. It is important that you train your all relevant staff according to the standards you as an organisation have set through a staff development programme (your own staff could achieve accredited qualifications in customer service). You will also need to build monitoring of these standards into your Quality Improvement processes, as well as staff appraisals, so that these staff take responsibility and become a partner in this process.

If your service is meeting their needs then you are well on the way to gaining repeat business. You also need to ensure that planned interventions are the most appropriate, by helping the employer to identify their problem, agree action, and offer a joint solution. Again finding out that this has been a positive experience is essential. This involves more staff development, in terms of staff offering advice and guidance, and for trainers in correctly interpreting needs into a programme, and for monitoring the programme throughout, with the ability to make changes when and if necessary. Once set a programme is not cast in stone if you want the customer to come back.

Materials

Case Study (Showing 1 of 1 available)

•   Relationship management, account management and repeat business - projects  (294 KB)
  Released: 24/08/2007 Downloadable file
  This report describes approaches taken by 10 providers to converting employers into committed users of the Train to Gain services.
  

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