One of the biggest challenges any business
faces is finding customers and keeping them. Engagement is a kind of
relationship, and it must be carefully cultivated if anyone is going to benefit
from it — whether it’s your customers or your company’s bottom line.
The pool business isn’t that unique, even if
it is seasonal. You still need to observe and abide by the basic principles of
what it means to offer fantastic customer service while keeping your
expenditures as low as possible.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could discover ways
to gain and keep more happy customers without spending lots of money to do it?
Well, read on because Quality Pool Supply has a few tips on customer engagement
that only require a little extra thoughtfulness.
1. Know Your Customers
One of the most important things you can do in
business is to know your customers. Who are they? Why did they choose you? What
are their pain points, and how can your business alleviate them?
However, it’s not enough to just know this.
Consider organizing the information you have so it becomes both useful and
usable. Once you’re organized, you can focus on what’s really going to make an
impact — not just for your business but for your customers.
If you want great customer engagement, you
have to give your customers a personalized experience. Hint: it helps if a
customer-centric vision guides your pool service business.
Most sales experts abide by the general
principle that the only way to sell anything properly is by discovering what
the customer needs and — above all else — serving them. You must offer
solutions that solve your customer’s needs. Knowing them is the starting line
for success in that race.
2. Value Your Customers’ Time
As a veteran of the pool service industry, you
know that one of the simplest and most effective ways you can serve your
customers is by showing up when you said you would. The flip side to that kind
of service is to maximize your efficiency while you’re on their property.
Another way you can ensure this gets done —
and this dovetails back into point #1 — is to gather customer feedback.
This is easily done with a contact card or an
email survey delivered to the customer at the time of service. Listen carefully
to what they tell you because this kind of feedback is like gold. It will allow
you to reasonably predict what they might need and how you can offer more in
terms of product delivery or service.
Think of it as an opportunity to gain an
advantage over your competitors by offering services ahead of time. Your
customers will feel valued and won’t want to get their products and services
anywhere else.
3. Allow Your Customers to Help Themselves
Self-service is a big deal, especially these
days. People have become so accustomed to managing their business online that
when they encounter any experience that doesn’t allow them to do it, they think
it’s slow, backward, or even untrustworthy.
Companies like Wix have available apps that
allow your customers to pick a time and date you’re available for a free
consult, a pool service, or a product delivery, all on your website. There’s
usually an eCommerce solution bundled with these apps, which means your
customers can also pay for what they need right when they schedule it.
If you’re not taking advantage of this, you
should! It’s literally like earning money while you sleep. Either that, or it’s
like finding the perfect personal assistant and hiring them to work for next to
nothing.
You’ll find that allowing your customers to
navigate your product and service mix on their own time and on their terms is
today’s version of going the extra mile. Anything that makes it easier is a
bonus, right? They’ll probably appreciate it enough to give you their business.
4. Educate and Advise
Okay, so this one is huge. If you’re a source
of good, trustworthy information first, it’s a win in business. Why? Because
the first thing you have to do is earn trust. These days, that’s a challenge.
We recommend you try this. First, educate,
then advise. You don’t want to put the cart before the horse. Advising before
educating makes you appear pushy or obsessed with profit. People generally hate
that. Customers who enjoy pushiness are usually the types who expect to be able
to haggle. Is that the kind of customer relationship you want?
It’s good to set a goal for your pool service
business to be the go-to source, whether in person or online, for the best and
most up-to-date information in the industry.
This allows you to establish authority in your
sector, and if you do that, people will turn to you for answers before consulting
with anyone else. It goes without saying that this is an enormous benefit for
your business.
5. Sell the Schedule
This final pointer might be a little outside
the box, and it goes back to point #3 — allowing your customers to help
themselves. Imagine how it might impact your business if you could reduce the
number of touches required to gain a sale.
You’ll have to shift your perspective on your
whole business for a moment, but imagine you don’t sell products and services
anymore. Imagine instead that you sell a schedule
for products and services. It’s a little like a membership or a subscription,
but it’s not monthly — it’s seasonal.
You might offer your customers a discount on
their pool service needs if they sign up for regularly scheduled maintenance.
You might offer installments or a payment plan. You could offer a larger
discount — or throw in the first dose of pool chemicals for free — if they pay
for an entire year upfront.
If you could convince customers to pay for
products or services in the offseason, that could help the cash flow for your
business.
Hopefully, these tips inspire you to get out there and
make a difference for your customers. If you do that, you won’t have any
problems with customer engagement.