If you’ve been part of my community for a while, you know that I live, breathe and preach Extreme Client Care™.
First, a definition for those new to our community:
Extreme Client Care™ is the practice of going one step further than your clients anticipate, in all things. It’s making it so easy and pleasurable to do business with you that you have no competition. It’s becoming the Disney or Nordstrom of your industry – from the behind-the-scenes systems to the level of personalization in communications to anticipating your clients’ and customers’ wants/needs often before they do themselves and acting upon those wants/needs.
And lest you think it’s all about sending cards and soft skills, the results of practicing Extreme Client Care™ speak for themselves:
- An overall 93% client retention rate of 2.3 years without binding contracts
- An average client lifespan of 4.1 years for a monthly continuity program
In short, the implementation of Extreme Client Care™ practices increases the lifetime value of your clients while decreasing overall marketing costs. 
Back to the “YES!” moments at Inbound 2015
- “Retention Marketing: The Next Ecommerce Battleground”
- “Ain’t No Customer Like a Zombie Customer: Using Great Service to Create Rabid Fans”
- “The Future of Sales: The Customer Now Leads The Sales Process”
- “Evergreen – Nurturing Your Customers from First Contact to Happily Ever After”
- “The New Era of Customer Relationships”
These are just a sampling of the sessions focusing on the client experience and how it needs to be at the forefront of every business – large or small.
The principles of Extreme Client Care™ are fast coming back to mainstream – at least in the businesses that want to be around tomorrow, next week and years from now! (HAPPY DANCE!)
Given this, what are you doing to build long term relationships with your star clients?
- Consistent Communication: Are you regularly providing value and helpful information?
- Variety in Communication: Are you using different communication methods – email, webinar, direct mail, videos, social media? People consume information in multiple ways, value different formats differently and just because you sent an email or posted something online doesn’t mean it got viewed. Note that a report from Epsilon Targeting found consumers overwhelmingly prefer direct mail to other marketing such as email. And that over 70% of those surveyed delete emails without ever opening.The report also confirmed something I’ve said for years: People enjoy checking their mailbox and, I’d add, seeing something other than bills and junk. In fact, according to the study, 62% of Americans and 63% of Canadians surveyed feel that way.
- Do you have a reputation for quality in products, service, marketing, information? Is your “stuff’ worth sharing and referring? With everything your clients (and prospective clients) are dealing with in a day, did their interaction with you bring value to their day or was it a waste of time?
Latest statistics say we see an average of 4,000 pieces of information per day – how are you standing out and comparing?
Questions/Comments? Start the conversation below. 🙂