Customer Follow Up Is King!

Do you follow up with with your customers and affiliates on a regular basis?

Many companies do a poor job of communicating with customers and overlook one of their biggest sources of revenue. In fact, many companies believe that once a sale is made the follow up process should end. Unfortunately they are losing a significant opportunity to build additional customer satisfaction, establish better rapport, credibility, lower returns, and increase their knowledge of the user experience.

Follow up is for more than just prospects. In fact, following up with customers is just as important. Post purchase follow up is overlooked by many businesses but can be implemented easily. Consider applying a basic process that can benefit overall consumer satisfaction significantly. Your process may include:

- Training to teach a customer how to use a product.

- Answering commonly asked questions before they are asked.

- Teaching users about lesser known features.

- Providing support contact information.

Don’t stop with customers. Also reach out to your affiliates. This can improve relationships and prioritize your products over others being promoted. The reality is that in most affiliate or reseller programs over 90% of affiliates never do anything. By properly following up with new and existing affiliates you can help increase the percentage of those actively promoting your products and often see immediate results.

Here are some ideas to consider for engaging affiliates and improving outcomes:

- Provide promotional material.

- Teach effective promotional techniques.

- Share best practices from top affiliates.

- Product education.

- Reminders to get the affiliate to take action.

- Introduce contests and incentives.

Whether you are focusing on improving the communication with your customers or affiliates (or both), consider what you do as being directly tied to increased revenue. Too often companies focus all of their energy on prospecting and not enough on nurturing existing relationships.

Look at your customer communication program today and ask, “how can I better communicate to my customers to improve loyalty, develop relationships, and generate more sales?”