It’s impossible to have a business without customers. Many businesses find themselves able to attract customers, but keeping those customers around is a harder battle. For many businesses, following through on simple customer service aspects can make a tremendous difference in the number of customers you retain.

Be Honest

The first step to retaining customers is to be completely honest and upfront with them about goods and service. Clever marketing can sell anything, but if a product does not live up to customer expectations, the customer will not be back. And worse, he may even tell a few friends about his negative experience. So an overly hyped item that fails to deliver can actually lose you future customers rather than retaining the one you initially caught.

Of course, you don’t need to tell every detail and company secret, but claiming a lotion will remove every wrinkle on a woman’s face will be met with serious skepticism and virtually no repeat business – unless it really does remove every wrinkle. It is far better to make a big deal out of the cream’s ability to polish the skin and reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. A realistic, well-worded, claim is easier for customers to believe and easier for customers to accept as true. (more…)