Do you ever have clients placing an order for your products or services only to cancel a while later?  There may be a very good reason why.

Communication!

Yes, that simple act of keeping in touch and letting them know what is happening behind the scenes can make the difference between a happy customer and one who gets fed up thinking they have been forgotten and decides to take their business elsewhere.

There is no better example of this than when I ran my estate agents.  Other agents were getting complaints and clients cancelling all the time to switch and coming to me.  My clients stayed with me and the business was built on word-of-mouth recommendations.

Why?

Because I kept in touch.  I put myself in their shoes and kept in mind how they might be feeling.  Whilst my team were busy behind the scenes calling people about their property to book viewings and chasing surveyors and solicitors when a sale was agreed, the homeowner had no idea this was going on.  All they had from other agents was silence.  I made sure that every one of my clients had a call to update them every single week, even if there was nothing new to say.  It made them feel important.  They knew exactly what was going on and appreciated the call.

Yes, it took time and effort but the fact that my estate agency soared whilst others were struggling spoke volumes.

The key to stopping clients from cancelling

Take a moment to think about how often you keep in contact with your clients.  Are you busy working behind the scenes on their behalf putting together their order or working on a project for them?  Do they know this? Are you updating them?  If not, then perhaps it’s time to think again about your communication policy.  Set up a simple database such as CapsuleCRM to keep in contact with everyone and see how much they appreciate it.  This simple step really could be the key to stopping your clients from cancelling and going elsewhere.

Just to finish, here are two current examples.  Just this morning I cancelled an order with a local company for having a sign made as they simply have not kept in contact with me and not sent information to me as promised.  I have chased them no less than three times and yet they have still failed to keep in contact, and I am now fed up.  I have now contacted another company and transferred my order to them.

The other example is my husband’s laptop which stopped working whilst under guarantee.  We took it back to the shop where it was purchased and they promised to fix it asap.  That was six weeks ago!!!  My husband has called on a number of occasions to get updates and then called again this morning.  They said it was fixed and had been posted back.  If this company had kept us updated and even let us know it was fixed and on the way back, we may have bought from them again.  As they couldn’t be bothered to keep in touch, we have both said we will never buy from them again (and will tell others not to!)

Communication is key

Remember, whatever you do, don’t forget communication is key. If you don’t keep in contact with your prospects and clients, don’t be surprised when they go and buy elsewhere.