How good is your customer service (Part 2)

In the first part of this article we talked about how important it is for your customers to know that they are special and important to you.  The first step is to make sure that they know they are important when they buy something from you. 

The second step is to make sure that they know you remember your customers after they leave.  To do this best, you need to keep some sort of a record of all of your customers. 

Usually it is easiest to do this with some sort of customer database software.  There are lots of customer contact management programs that are easy to learn and use for this.  Act and Goldmine are two of the more popular ones.  You can do something really simple in Excel, or in Word, or just on a pad of paper if you want to though.

However you decide to set it up, here's what you want to have when you're done.  Your records should keep track of your customers name, address, phone, email address, when they purchased last from you, how many times that bought, and how much they have paid for their purchases from you.  There are more things that you can do, but this gives you the basics for what you need to do.

Once you have this, you can keep in touch with past customers easily.  You can write, email, or phone them to stay in touch.  You can send them a thank you note for their order.  You can give them a quick reminder when you think that they are running out of a product and might need a refill.  You can send them an anniversary note a month or a year after their first purchase from you.  You can pay special attention to your best customers who bought a lot from you (or who buy from you over and over again).  You can let your newest
customers know about other products that are similar to what they just ordered.  There are hundreds of other possibilities.

Instead of just saying "Thank you, please come again" when someone becomes your customer, let people know that they are special to you.  Then, make sure they remember you (and how special they are to you) later.

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