How to use face-to-face interactions for customer retention.

There are so many awesome technologies for staying in touch these days. And I use just about all of them to keep in touch with my dad… he lives in England, on the other side of the world to me.

We email each other most days; send SMS (text messages) for news we want to share right away; we talk on the phone; sometimes we Skype; and we send cards in the mail.

Sure, it’s great to have all this… but there’s nothing like seeing each other in person. Being able to take trips together, laugh together, hug. There’s nothing like seeing each other face-to-face, and when it’s been a while since we’ve had that connection, we really start craving it.

The connection with your customers isn’t quite as strong as this family bond, but the same rules apply.

Customers value face-to-face contact as well

Though you may not hug your customers, they will value face-to-face interactions from time to time!

This may depend on your industry to some extent… but even if you have an ecommerce website, and minimal customer interaction, it doesn’t mean you should rule this out completely.

Personal interactions move the business relationship from being a transaction to being, well, a relationship…

Transactions are cold, clinical, impersonal. If you merely transact business, your product or service becomes a commodity, and customers are quickly lured away to cheaper competitors. (Read: How to get your Customers to Climb the Magic Beanstalk of Customer Loyalty.)

But if you take the business relationship to a more personal level, customers become emotionally invested in it. The deeper the connection, the less likely that customers will be lured to a competitor. It’s up to you to deepen that connection, and face-to-face interactions are the way to do it.

What kinds of face-to-face interactions for customer retention are there?

There are 4 broad types of face-to-face interactions for customer retention:

Which type(s) of customer interaction should you choose?

The kinds of customer interactions you select depend on your business or industry. For example, group events generally work well for B2C (business-to-consumer) companies. Whether they work for B2B (business-to-business) organisations depends on the extent of the rivalry between the customers. I’ve worked in some industries, where customers are bitter rivals, and putting them in the same room together would be a seriously bad idea.

But in other industries, the competition between customers is friendlier – or non-existent even. So it’s up to you to decide what’s relevant for the business you’re in.

Another consideration is your budget

The amount that you spend on face-to-face interactions depends on the profitability of your customers. You need to keep that aligned with your expenses.

In practical terms, it can mean tiering your customers into different levels: it’s perfectly OK to take just your top 5% or 20% (or however many) of your customers out for lunch.

But what if you don’t want to have lunch with a customer?

If the thought of having lunch with a customer makes you cringe, then it may be best not to do it. Assess each case individually.

After all, not all customers are the same, and not everyone likes being taken out to lunch.

The whole purpose of this exercise is to interact in a way that’ll deepen the relationship, and for that to happen the other party has to enjoy the experience! So if you think that lunch together would be a big flop, then don’t do it.

Again, it’s up to you to make the call as to what’s suitable – and what simply won’t work.

If socialising is a no-no, then focus on work-related catch-ups. That’s fine. The important thing is that you do schedule them!

Schedule year-round customer interactions

Imagine if I didn’t phone or email my dad for 3 months. He’d be pretty upset, right? Good relationships need regular contact, and the same applies with your customers.

So make sure that you schedule regular catch-ups with your customers throughout the year. Diarise reminders. Do what you need to do to make them happen.

And again, it’s fine to tier customers into different levels: it’s not practical or helpful to visit every customer every week. After all, not all customers are created equal; they don’t all spend the same amount with you.

For example, in one company where I worked, the Business Development Managers in the sales team had different schedules for different customers. The A-Grade customers would get a visit every month, and phone calls in-between times at least once a week. (These customers needed a lot of servicing.) The B-Grade customers may receive a visit every quarter, and phone calls every two weeks. And the C-Grade customers would get one visit a year, and a monthly phone call… that’s all that was needed (or was relevant) to the smaller customers. What you do depends on your customers, and also the resources you have available to you.

What about industries where face-to-face interactions are tricky?

If seeing customers one-on-one isn’t possible, try to organise a seminar or workshop once or twice a year… if it’s appropriate to your business, of course.

Or if you really can’t manage that, at least fill in the gaps with other media: after all, you have snail mail, email, social media, Skype/instant messaging, the telephone and SMS (text messaging) available to you… make the most of it!

After all, while my dad understands that I can’t visit him as often as I’d like, I at least make up for that in other ways! And you should do the same with your customers. Whereas family bonds are hard to break, customer bonds are far more fragile and you need to treat them as such.

Summary

• Face-to-face interactions deepen business relationships, which can help with your customer retention.
•  There are 4 different types of face-to-face interactions you can have with your customers: they can be work-related, fun, one-on-one or group events.
• The nature of the interactions will depend on your industry, budget and resources… as well as what your customer will enjoy.
• Ideally, you should schedule face-to-face interactions all year round, though it can be worth tiering your customers so that the attention they receive is in line with their spend.
• If you really can’t spend time face-to-face with your customers, make the most of all the other media you have available to you: snail mail, email, social media, Skype/instant messaging, the telephone and SMS (text messaging).

Business thank you cards are an easy and effective way to show your appreciation.

Have you ever tried training a dog to obey some basic commands?

“Sit”, “stay”, “drop”… that kind of thing.

Well, the key to obedience training is to give the dog a reward when it performs a task well. That treat could be food, or a toy, or a pat… whatever motivates the dog. That way, the dog learns what’s good behaviour, and being people-pleasers, they’ll repeat the good behaviour. (Well, most of the time… let’s just say that my west highland terrier can be a little stubborn!)

On the other hand, losing your temper with a dog won’t get you very far at all. They won’t really want to obey you… perhaps through fear, but hopefully I only have people who are nice to animals reading this blog.

I digress… the point is that rewards encourage good, positive behaviour. And we as humans aren’t really that much different.

Yes, both the proverbial sticks and carrots can motivate humans. I for one respond far, far better to carrots and will avoid the stick-strewn path at all costs. But a nice reward? Yes, please!

A “thank you” is a very simple reward to give

The simplest way to show your appreciation of a job done well is to say just two little words: “thank you”.

Saying “thank you” is easy, effortless, and it doesn’t cost you a bean.

However, in my view, these two little words aren’t used anywhere near often in enough in business.

Why bother saying thank you in business?

Why say “thank you” in business when you’ve paid hard-earned money for a product or service? You’re entitled to receive what you’ve paid for, after all!

The reason why it’s worth saying “thank you” is because that product or service has been delivered by a person. A person with feelings, emotions, worries, concerns, dreams, frustrations… in short, a person like you or like me. (And not some kind of work robot.)

The person delivering you the product or service may have had to make personal sacrifices to deliver it on time. Perhaps they’ve been up all night with a sick child. Perhaps they’re supporting a frail relative. Perhaps their boss is a mean ol’ slavedriver. Perhaps their car broke down earlier in the day.

OK, so there may not have been any such sacrifice, but a sincere “thank you” is always appreciated. What’s more, saying a heart-felt “thank you” also encourages future good service delivery from that person. Yes, it’s a bit like rewarding a dog… they’ll be nice to you if you’re nice to them.

The key is to be sincere when saying “thank you”

An insincere thank you is demotivating. For example, I used to have a boss who’d handwrite his instructions for me, and at the end he always wrote “thx”. I always thought that this was rude and slapdash – he can’t really be thankful, if he can’t even be bothered to write “thanks” in full!

Yes, I realise I’m reading waaaaay too much into the “thx”, but the point remains that a “thank you” should be sincere if you want it to have the desired motivational effect. And in my view, there’s no way that’s more sincere than sending a “thank you” card…

Thank you cards? Isn’t that a bit old-fashioned?

Yes, it may be old-fashioned to send business thank you cards but, as the saying goes, “manners maketh man” (or woman). Sending a thank you card is a classy touch that will elevate you far above your competitors.

Here are some extracts from one of my favourite business authors, Paddi Lund, which help to explain why I’m so passionate about thank you cards:

“Politeness is the oil of the wheels of society.

Most people believe that they should be polite to strangers. They know that if they are not, the strangers will not like them and not be polite in return. When strangers are not polite people feel offended and unloved: feelings that make for unhappiness and no one wants to be unhappy.

If it is important to be polite to strangers so that the social interaction we have with them makes for happiness, then surely it must be even more important to be polite to people who are intimates and have much more power to make our life unhappy.

All social graces are learned. If our parents did not educate us in the niceties of social eating, everyone would feel nauseated when at the table in our company.

Social behaviour is something we are taught. It is not instinctive. We learn how to walk gracefully, not to eject gas from our bodies noisily in company and to blow our noses without contaminating those around us. Almost every behaviour we have has been learned and practised. Why not a few more?

Politeness affirms the dignity of the people with whom we communicate.”

Source: ‘Building the Happiness-Centred Business’, Dr. Paddi Lund

In short: I think it’s rude not to say thank you in some form (be it verbally or written), and putting it in writing is a thoughtful, classy way to do it.

I used to hate writing thank you cards as a kid, but now I’m a few years older I realise how nice it is to be appreciated!

After all, when was the last time you received business thank you cards from your suppliers? I bet that you don’t receive many business thank you cards… so when you do receive one (and it’s a nice, sincere, thoughtful one), it gets noticed. Sending thank you cards is an effective way to differentiate your business and elevate it above your competitors.

Best of all, you have many opportunities to send business thank you cards.

What could you send business thank you cards for?

There are numerous opportunities to use thank you cards in business, and I’d encourage you to embrace as many of them as possible.

Some ideas are:

• Thank you for choosing me to work with you (pre-project)
• Thank you for the work (ad-hoc projects)
• Thank you for the ongoing work
• Thank you for a great referral
• Thank you for the meeting/lunch/catch-up/other nice thing
• Thank you for you testimonial.

Crunch your numbers

As with any other marketing tactic, you should crunch your numbers first to make sure that sending business thank you cards is viable. For example, there’s no point sending business thank you cards if your average dollar sale is very low… the cost/benefit analysis simply won’t stack up.

But if you’re in a reasonably high value/high margin business, it’s worth a look.

When it comes to sourcing and sending the cards, I have some more tips for you…

Some design tips for your business thank you cards…

For the thank you card to make an impact, it needs to look great. Use high-quality store-bought cards if you need to. Or better still, get some customised cards designed and printed, with your company details on the reverse.

Pay good attention to the design on the front, and ask if it’s something you’d want to display in your home or office.

I’ve seen some terrible thank you cards: two particular ones stick in my mind:

• The first one had just the business’ logo on the front (very large) with the words “thank you” underneath. It was quite ugly.
• The second card had just the business owner’s photo on the front. While I like the business owner, I didn’t really want to look at a photograph of him every day.

Let’s just say I appreciated the gesture from these business owners, but these particular cards were filed in my bin rather than pinned up on my noticeboard…

I’d suggest you get a good graphic designer to make something reasonably stylish for you.

If, like me, you need your cards to be multi-purpose, then keep the wording on the front a simple “thank you”. (And the inside blank, so you can write whatever you need to say.)

If you can afford to have multiple thank you cards for different purposes, that’s cool. You might consider:

• Thank you for your business (or: Thank you for your valued business)
• Thank you for your referral
• Thank you for shopping with us
• … and you can get a message printed inside, too.

Be sure to handwrite at least some of the thank you card

For the thank you card to have maximum impact, it is vital that you handwrite the inside… or at least some of it, e.g. the recipient’s name and your signature.

(If the entire card is pre-printed, it is lacking in sincerity… remember, the whole point of the thank you is relationship building, and that needs the personal touch in this instance.)

Personally I handwrite the entire message… yes, my handwriting is scrawly and ugly, but that doesn’t matter. It’s the personal touch and the effort that’s gone into it that counts.

Save time with business thank you card scripts

Do you find yourself writing similarly worded thank you cards time and time again?

Make a note of your most common scripts, and refer to them. It’ll save lots of head scratching “what shall I write” moments.

Why you need to be careful when selecting envelopes for thank you cards

Envelope choice isn’t something that most business owners stop to think about, but you can influence the recipient’s perception of the card before they even open it.

Do not use the same kind of envelope that you send your invoices or statements in: the recipient will recognise these, and their emotional bank balance will go into the negative end of the scale before they’ve even seen what’s inside. This is not the impact you want!

Instead, choose an envelope that’s a different colour, or maybe even a different size.

For example, I send my official business correspondence (i.e. the boring stuff) in plain white envelopes that are DLE sized (to fit A4 paper folded into three). But my business thank you card envelopes are C6 size (to fit a card that folds to A6 size), and they’re usually cream coloured or maybe silver. And the address is handwritten.

The standout envelope means that there’s a bit of anticipation building before the recipient even opens the card.

Consider putting some goodies inside the thank you card

An additional way to build anticipation before the recipient opens the card is to put some goodies inside. That will make the envelope bulky, so it’ll be even more obvious that this envelope contains something nice and fun – and that it’s not an invoice!

Make sure that the goodies you enclose add to your brand’s message and match the quality of your product or service.

For example, my thank you cards generally contain high quality Swiss chocolates. That’s a nod to my Swiss heritage, but it also reinforces the quality of what I do.

Thus each card sends me a few dollars to send… and I can think of no other way to deliver such a “wow” factor for such a small amount of money and effort.

My approach to business thank you cards is one of the key reasons why I enjoy a high rate of repeat business, as well as oodles of quality referrals. In keeping with The Leaky Bathtub Marketing Principle, I work hard to ensure that my customers feel valued, so they keep coming back for more.

In fact, I frequently receive a “thank you for the thank you card” email or phone message from the recipient, simply because they’re so impressed… and really, it’s such a small gesture!

Sending business thank you cards promptly and consistently is important

If you decide that sending business thank you cards could work for you, there are two final factors to consider: promptness and consistency.

• Promptness: You should send the thank you card as soon as possible after the event in order for it to be perceived as being sincere (and not an afterthought). Note that if you’re sending thank you cards to your customers thanking them for their business, the most appropriate time to say thank you is immediately after the customer has made their payment. The thank you is more sincere that way.
• Consistency: You need a system in place to ensure that you send out the cards consistently, month after month. If you send cards some months, but not others, your customers will wonder why. They may think that if you’re not sending business thank you cards any more (a) you no longer value them, or (b) your standards have slipped and your product or service is no longer up to scratch.

I must admit that it is the promptness and consistency factors that I struggle with the most in my business… when it gets busy, it’s a juggling act. Balls get dropped, but that’s no excuse. This particular aspect of my customer retention programme is important, and I need to make time for it, no matter how busy I am.

After all, I always make time to walk my (not-very-obedient) dog, so it’s easy to combine a trip to the mailbox with a dog walk.

My New Year resolution for next year? To be more prompt and more consistent with sending business thank you cards… maybe I could train my dog to remind me?! 😉

Summary

• Saying “thank you” is a simple way to show your appreciation and encourage/reward good behaviour in business.
• People like to feel appreciated.
• Thank-yous must be sincere in order for them to have the desired effect.
• Sending thank you cards is a classy way to say thank you.
• There are numerous opportunities to say “thank you” in business.
• Crunch your numbers to make sure that this marketing tactic is viable for your business.
• It’s worth paying attention to the design of your business thank you cards.
• Handwrite at least some of the thank you card message.
• If you send a lot of thank you cards, write out scripts for the most common message types that you can refer back to.
• Choose nice envelopes for your thank you cards, so it doesn’t look like an invoice!
• For an even bigger “wow” factor, put some goodies inside the thank you card.
• Send the thank you cards promptly and consistently.
• Sending thank you cards can help with your customer retention rates and referral rates.