Find the right after-sales strategy to keep your customers happy [7 essential tips]

What do you do after a customer completes a purchase? Do you forget about them and hope they come back for another purchase, or do you try to strengthen your relationship with them?

If you just forget about your buyers, you’re missing out on a big opportunity. 

Maintaining a good relationship with customers is an essential step at every step of the journey, even after a sale. 

Providing after-sales service shows you value your customers, and encourages them to buy from your business again. In addition, a well-served customer can act as a promoter of your products and services, which increases your business’ visibility.

Therefore, delighting repeat customers with a memorable after-sales service is just as important as obtaining new ones.

Did you know that there are simple but effective ways of keeping in touch with customers without being annoying?

In this post, we’ve listed the main ones, and explain in detail how you can build loyalty without spending too much.

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What is after-sales service? Why is after-sales so important? 7 after-sales service tips that you can put into practice

What is after-sales service?

Before we talk about customer loyalty tips, it is important that you understand the concept of after-sales well. 

After-sales services are all processes that come after the act of selling itself, such as contact via email, sending purchasing coupons on customers’ birthdays, discounts for a second purchase, among others. 

But despite being essential for customer loyalty, after-sales service is a step that is often neglected by most entrepreneurs, since many of them are only concerned about selling a product and thus, end up missing an excellent opportunity of turning customers into recurring buyers. 

We’ll give you an example so that you can understand how it works in practice.

Let’s suppose that a certain customer makes a purchase and a few days later, receives an email from the company with tips to better use the product.

This contact is part of the after-sales service, in other words, it is the company seeking to strengthen its ties with consumers, delivering relevant information to them. 

When receiving the email, users realize that they are important to the company. This increases the chances that they’ll come back to make purchases or will praise their experience with the brand, which is good for the entrepreneur and especially, for the business.

Just to give you an idea, according to Semrush, 44% of businesses focus on customer acquisition, while only 18% focus on customer retention.

Why is after-sales so important?

No one questions the importance of obtaining new customers. After all, this is what keeps a business, whether physical or online, running and profitable.

The problem is that obtaining new customers can cost five to seven times more than building loyalty among consumers who have shopped with your brand before.

Philip Kotler, one of the greatest marketing experts in the world, says that this happens because acquiring a new customer involves a series of actions that take time to produce results, and cost more than building loyalty among those who already know the brand.

These actions include investments to educate the market about your niche, produce content for the sales funnel, outline lead capture and conversion strategies, etc.

All this investment of time and money is reduced when investing in after-sales, since this audience already knows your brand and the products offered.

This way, you don’t need to educate the market or guide these consumers through all the steps of the funnel until they decide to buy.

Another great advantage of investing in customer after-sales relationships is that it helps create brand advocates.

When consumers are treated well, even after the purchase has already been made, they feel special and are likely to recommend your company to family and friends.

Always remember that loyal and satisfied customers help bring in new consumers!

And after-sales service is just the start. You can take the next step and even build a community for your loyal customers. Check out the video below to learn more:

7 after-sales service tips that you can put into practice

There are several metrics that entrepreneurs need to keep an eye on, and one of them is the Returning Customers metric, in other words, the number of people that have already purchased a product from you and have come back to make a new purchase.

According to American marketing consultant Philip Kotler, attracting new customers costs 5 to 7 times more than keeping the current ones. 

Therefore, it’s worth investing in after-sales to create loyalty in customers that have already demonstrated an interest in you and your product. Because this way, you won’t need to invest more in the acquisition of customers, since those consumers are already part of your base. 

Now, we’ll provide 7 ideas that can be applied in your business’ after-sales:

1. Ask for buyer feedback

The concept of feedback is simple: reaction to a stimulus. When asked about their experience with the purchased product, customers offer an opinion, which must be considered by the vendor.

Customer feedback serves as an indicator to evaluate the product’s usefulness, the degree of satisfaction, cost-effectiveness and much more. 

One good idea is contacting customers a week after they purchase a product and asking them what they thought of the experience if they have any questions or had problems during its use.  

It’s work emphasizing the importance of taking into account these opinions and answers provided by customers when thinking about new products or improvements to existing ones.

2. Offer discounts

Everybody likes discounts, right? 

One of the most effective ways of engaging customers in after-sales is by offering exclusive discounts and promotions. 

In order to obtain better results, you can create campaigns for those customers who have demonstrated interest or have consumed the brand’s products, such as offering coupons for those who visit your page for the first time, thus encouraging them to buy. 

3. Contact customers on special dates

Customers are normal people, full of feelings. Brands that contact customers on special dates, such as birthdays, reveal their concern not only with sales but also with the person’s well-being.

Use commemorative dates to give “gifts” to your customers. Exclusive discounts and promotions on such occasions are much appreciated. 

If you don’t have sufficient resources to promote marketing actions, a simple “Happy Birthday” message will have excellent results, because it helps to humanize your brand and bring it closer to the buyer. 

4. Create and send relevant content

Frequently sending relevant content strengthens your authority on the subject and shows that your business can solve the problems faced by users. 

This is important because when consumers are prepared to make another purchase, they will remember the company that kept in touch with them without asking for anything in return. 

And how do we do this? 

The answer lies in content marketing! 

We have several posts here on the blog that teach how entrepreneurs can generate traffic for their page by merely producing quality educational material. But in order to produce content, it is necessary to be careful. 

Ideally, 80% of posts, texts or videos produced by the company should be intended to answer customers’, or potential customers’, questions, and only 20% should be material focused on the product and sales. 

This means that the brand must always be nurturing its customers with articles, infographics, videos, and other informative material. 

In content marketing, these materials are valuable because they do the work of attracting or enticing customers, and of promoting customer loyalty.

Entrepreneurs that really wish to sell must strive to attract customers instead of bothering them with dozens of sales ads. 

5. Nurture leads via email

Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective content marketing techniques, because you deliver content directly to the recipient’s inbox without algorithms limiting your message’s reach, as occurs with certain social media. 

Leads, on the other hand, are potential customers who have already demonstrated an interest in the brand, whether purchasing a product or filling out a form on the website, for example.

That’s why email marketing is an essential tool in the after-sales phase to promote customer loyalty and entice customers! 

A good email marketing strategy is created in two steps: 

1. First, it is necessary to build a good email list consisting of users that authorize you to contact them. Inserting capture forms in the blog can help you form your email list, but you can also create another list by importing your Facebook followers’ contact information, for example.
2. Then, you need to check in which step of the sales funnel those users are in order to send them relevant content at that time (this is the concept of content marketing!).  

It’s also necessary to be careful with the content, frequency, and language to be used. 

Rather than simply bombarding subscribers with information-packed emails, you should produce relevant content that truly provides information to recipients and encourages them to continue to relate to your brand.  

6. Launch new features to your loyal customers first

Prioritizing existing customers when launching new products is excellent for customer loyalty, because it demonstrates that the brand cares and values old customers, giving them first-hand access to news involving new products and services.

Exclusivity is one of the basic elements of customer loyalty. 

When customers see themselves as being unique, they feel special. More than a product, they will be gaining an experience that goes beyond a business relationship. 

Cases such as the release of Apple products are perfect examples of this strategy, but on a global scale. 

7. Don’t forget about customer support

In the same manner that companies contact customers, customers also contact companies. 

In after-sales support, contact can be related to the use of the purchased product, support and much more. That’s why it’s important for the brand to maintain an open and functional communication channel, which can meet the existing demand.

Abandoning customers after sales is one of the mistakes that cannot be made. They need support in order to get the most out of the purchased product. Not to mention that they might be after information about new products in order to buy other products of the brand.

Remember that a bad experience posted on the Internet can be enough to destroy a brand’s reputation. 

(Go ahead and read our post on how to protect your business in a time of crisis.)

It’s time to put these tips into practice!

By applying these 7 after-sales tips, we believe that you’ll be able to entice your customers. 

As you may have noticed, well-nurtured and happy customers can come back and purchase products, in addition to promoting the brand to family and friends. 

Therefore, always provide good customer service during the after-sales step, because this is essential to creating loyalty and attracting consumers, in addition to optimizing your expenses with the acquisition of new customers. After-sales support is therefore beneficial both for the business and for consumers.

In order to help you achieve the best results in your after-sales support, make sure you also check out our post that will teach you everything about lead nurturing and see how this strategy will help you increase your sales results.

This text was originally published in March 2018 and updated to include additional and more precise information.