After-sales service is often overlooked, but it is one of the most important factors in building customer loyalty. A positive after-sales experience can leave a lasting impression on customers and make them more likely to return to your business in the future.

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, especially 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.

In other words, after-sales service is important because it shows customers that you care about them and their experience with your business. When customers have a positive after-sales experience, they are more likely to:

• Return to your business in the future
• Recommend your business to others
• Leave positive reviews

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.

What is after-sales service?

After-sales service is the support and assistance that businesses provide to customers after they have purchased a product or service. It is an essential part of building customer loyalty and ensuring repeat business.

More than that, after-sales services are all processes that come after the act of purchase 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, according to Forbes, obtaining new customers can cost five to seven times more than building loyalty among consumers who have shopped with your brand before.

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 you invest 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.

And there are many other advantages to good after-sales service, too: 

• Increased customer satisfaction: When customers feel that they are being taken care of after they have made a purchase, they are more likely to be satisfied with their experience and continue doing business with the company.
• Reduced customer churn: After-sales service can help to reduce customer churn by making customers feel valued and appreciated. This can lead to customers coming back for more and becoming repeat customers.
• Increased brand loyalty: After-sales service can help to increase brand loyalty by creating a positive customer experience. When customers feel that they are being treated well, they are more likely to recommend the company to their friends and family.
• Improved profits: After-sales service can lead to improved profits by increasing customer satisfaction, reducing customer churn, and increasing brand loyalty.

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 customer rate, in other words, the number of people that have already purchased a product from you and have come back to make a new purchase.

Another important metric is the customer lifetime value (CVL), which is an estimate of the total revenue a business could to generate from a customer during their relationship with your business. After-sales service is essential to increase this number, which, according to Forbes, is the most important metric for measuring clients.

So, 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 actionable 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. It’s also essential to learn how to deal with negative feedback!

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. 

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. 

So our tip is: Go the extra mile! Businesses can go the extra mile by providing customers with unexpected extras, including free gifts.

3. Contact customers on special dates

That’s a way to personalize the experience! Businesses can personalize the after-sales experience by getting to know their customers and their individual needs. This can be done by tracking customer interactions and preferences and contacting them on special dates, such as birthdays, and anniversaries.

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 your 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 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 way that companies contact customers, customers also contact companies. That means providing customer service.

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 communication channel, which can meet the existing demand.

And when responding to customer inquiries, businesses should be helpful and friendly. This means taking the time to understand the customer’s problem and providing them with a solution that meets their needs.

Abandoning customers after a sales is definitely a mistake. They need support to get the most out of the purchased product. Not to mention that they might be after information about new products to buy other products of the brand.

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

So, with this in mind, here are some additional tips for you to provide excellent after-sales support:

• Make it easy for customers to contact you. Provide multiple ways for customers to contact you, such as phone, email, live chat, and social media.
• Be transparent. Be honest and upfront with customers about any problems or delays.
• Take responsibility. If you make a mistake, own up to it and apologize.
• Learn from your mistakes. Use customer feedback to identify areas where you can improve your after-sales service.

It’s time to put these after-sales tips into practice!

After-sales service is an important part of any business. By providing excellent after-sales service, you can build customer loyalty and boost your bottom line.

By putting these 7 customer service tips into practice, you’re likely to build a good and lasting relationship with your customers.

As you may have noticed, well-nurtured relationships with happy customers usually equal repeat purchases, in addition to word-of-mouth, which is a great and effective to promote a business. 

 After-sales support is beneficial both for the business and for consumers.

To help you achieve the best results in your after-sales service, make sure you also build a strong brand with tips from Gary Vaynerchuk. 

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