Every new customer matters greatly for any business in increasing profits, and ROI. But what matters the most is how long that customer will stay loyal to your brand and how much business he brings to you repeatedly through effective after-sales service practices.

Additionally, the costs involved in new customer acquisition are higher by 5%  as compared to retaining the existing customer.

To achieve repeated business from the same customer, you need to keep your best foot forward and go till the last mile to keep that customer satisfied. You can only make your customers happy by providing them with the best after sale service or support

What is after sale service?

After sale service means any kind of support or service extended to the customer by the company after the initial sale is closed.

This after sale service or after sale support can be achieved by constant customer engagement over all the existing channels of the business.

Companies use this post sale service as part of their business strategy to increase their customer satisfaction rate, customer retention rate, brand loyalty, brand value, and further word-of-the-mouth marketing.

Let us now see what are the 10 must-know after sales service practices in the industry presently that will help boost your customer retention rate and ROI.

• Sending Gratitude emails/SMS
• Offering discounts and coupons
• Customer Loyalty Programs
• Customer Support par Excellence
• Multi-channel support
• Order Updates
• Smoother Return Experience
• Sharing Knowledge
• Share Social Proof
• Acknowledging the Feedback

Sending Gratitude emails/SMS

Saying “Thank You” works like magic on a personal note to every customer. This will immediately connect them to your brand and initiate a healthy two-way communication between you and them.

Email Marketing Channel had been best rated (58%) for higher Customer Retention, owing to the high open rates and conversions.

You can even extend this conversation by sharing some interesting information or facts to know, or a how-to-start guide for the product that they have purchased from you.

This will build confidence in your brand and also shows them that you care for them. Attaching an additional exciting thank you offer coupon will impress your new customer and politely pursue them to come back to you.

You can even send customized automated thanking emails to save your time and establish your brand credibility as well. For this, you can integrate your email support with Helplama Helpdesk and send AI-drafted emails instantaneously.

Offering Discounts and Coupons

Every customer loves to be treated with some exciting offers, gift coupons, and discounts. There is always one or the other festive season or special days like Valentine’s Day, Friendship Day, etc around the year. You can always cash in on them.

You can also surprise your customers with special offers and discounts along with personalized well-wishing greetings on their special occasions like their birthdays, wedding days, anniversaries, etc will add a personal touch.

So, you just need to learn what you as a brand have to offer and what kinds of offers will delight your customer, and when.

Customer Loyalty Programs

You can improve your customer retention by implementing Customer Loyalty Programs. “52% of American consumers will join the loyalty program of a company” as shown by a recent Forbes stats.

If the customers know that they can enjoy more perks and benefits if they continue buying from you, then they will surely stick to your brand.

You can design the customer loyalty program depending upon your business model and at various stages of your customer journey with your brand.

For example, you can offer them membership signup offers, reward points on every purchase, bonus points for referrals, membership contests and prizes, VIP status, etc to keep your customers continuously engaged with your brand.

Top brands like Starbucks, Uber, Amazon, The Body Shop, and more keep their customers always stay connected with them through ongoing reward programs.

Customer Support par Excellence

The Invespcro graphic shows that “a whopping 89% of companies view customer experience as a key factor in driving customer loyalty and retention”.

The above study proves that most companies have realized the fact that “excellent customer service is very essential for their company’s growth”.

Meet your customers’ expectations on every support request at any point of time of their journey with your brand. Most importantly, after the first sale as this new customer had just begun his journey with your brand.

Studies show that 86% of the customers are willing to pay extra for receiving the best customer experience from the brands. Whereas 91% of the customers would walk straight out in case of a pretty bad customer experience.

Overall, excellent customer service means responding to your customers’ requests faster, resolving the issues sooner, and going far and beyond to provide personalized support solutions.

35.2% of US customers give 5-star ratings mainly because of good customer service.

Using automated solutions wherever applicable will help you achieve higher Fast Response Time results.

Customers don’t like to repeat themselves every time they contact customer support. If your agents keep bombarding them with questions every time, then they are sure to exit from your brand. To avoid this, you need to have an effective Helpdesk that can help collect and organize all the customer’s data on one single screen for providing the best CX.

Multi-channel support

In this digital age, every small or big size business is compelled to be present on a maximum number of digital channels or platforms to attract a larger audience. And so must be your customers’ points of interaction available on every channel.

Social Media has become an integral part of our daily lives. Customers these days prefer social media shopping over physical store shopping owing to their busy lives and pandemic effect. And so for any service or support request too.

Surveys say that 79% of the customers expect to hear from the companies over their social media requests within a day.

It is imperative that you promptly respond to your customer on the same channel through which he approaches you. For this, you should have a smart social media integration tool that can efficiently help you provide your customer with seamless customer support.

Including a Live chat widget on your website will help your customers reach you at any time. Customers expect prompt and faster answers, and if you act on the same will boost your brand’s credibility among them.

Email still holds a very strong position in customer communication channels. Studies show that there are 4 Billion daily email users and that smartphone users prefer brand communications through email.

Overall you need a super-efficient helpdesk like Helplama Helpdesk to help you achieve this successful multi-channel customer support goal.

Order Updates

You might have overlooked this step in the past, in the assumption of automatic delivery of the ordered product to your customer.

But, what if the shipment gets delayed due to any unforeseen situation, and your customer is completely unaware of this?

This unwarranted wait period increases customers’ anxiety. This delay makes the customer very unhappy to a high extent if it is his first purchase from your brand. And as a result, you may lose potential future businesses.

To avoid such a case, we recommend you integrate a helpdesk software that efficiently tracks the orders daily and updates you automatically so that you can provide a proactive customer support experience.

Smoother Return Experience

In any unfortunate situation, if the customer is not happy with his first purchase from your brand and expects to return or exchange, do not hesitate to offer him the same instantly.

Additionally, help make the returns process seamless and automatic by using an efficient Helpdesk tool so that the process is quicker and gives your customer a smoother return UX.

This in a way would negate his displeasure and also convince him to check for alternate options available with your brand.

Sharing Knowledge

It is recently found from surveys, that 86% of customers expect to stay longer with a company that shares on-boarding and ongoing knowledge of their product or services periodically.

Companies should intend to share the “How-to” knowledge with the customers immediately after their initial buy. This will help the new customers greatly in case of any technical or installation requirements. This will greatly satisfy them about their buying decision from your brand.

Prolonged knowledge-sharing interactions will doubly ensure their confidence in your brand. You can share any DIY quick fix solutions, periodic modifications in usage, any foreseen service requirements, etc to constantly remind them that you take the utmost customer responsibility.

Sending out personalized upcoming events or offers emails will have a great positive impact on the customers’ future buying decisions. Take the example of the eCommerce giant Amazon, they keep sharing everything from product recommendations and product upsells based on customers’ previous buying behavior.

Share Social Proof

A study by Spiegel Research Center found that 95% of customers consult online reviews before buying.

Sharing social proof not only boosts new sales but also helps greatly in customer retention if you incentivize the customer reviews with a reward system. Your customers start believing in your brand if you show them all the user-generated reviews transparently. This will boost your brand trust and eventually shoot up your ROI too.

Yet, you should not be spending much of your valuable time collecting all the reviews manually from all the channels and posting or sharing them by yourself.

Use the smarter way of integrating an intuitive Helpdesk to collect, manage, and showcase the reviews effectively. Helplama Helpdesk aims at just that. It identifies happy customers and tries to automate the collection of Google reviews, Trustpilot reviews, and user-generated videos so that you can use them for your social proof purposes.

Acknowledging the Feedback

Another simple yet effective way to retain the customers is to acknowledge their feedback honestly.

Your customers take some time out from their valuable busy schedule to share some inputs regarding your product or service.

You should acknowledge the same promptly and implement the possible modifications and let the customers know that you are listening. This will impact hugely in higher customer retention rate and ROIs.

Let me give you another example of the leading FMCG brand Nestle, which ran a successful Consumer Engagement campaign for their subsidiary Nestle Waters’ North America division. They directly monitored the feedback and implemented the same in their services to see positive and improved results.

Postscript

In all, you would have now understood how important it is to look after your customer immediately after every sale. We have explained here that it is necessary that you design and develop an effective after sale service campaign to retain your happy customers and to grow your numbers through them.

To help you with that, we recommend you check out Helplama Helpdesk. It is a complete helpdesk solutions software to provide exceptional customer service on multiple channels – your store site, Shopify, social platforms, email, and live chat. Its AI-integrated tools help reduce your manual time by up to 50%. Then why wait?