Acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer. Couple that with the fact your success rate of selling to an existing customer is 60-70% while convincing a new customer to book with your swim school only works 5-20% of the time, and you see why increasing customer retention is essential for the success of your business.
So let’s dive into eight ways to improve customer retention for your business.
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A simple but effective way to retain customers is to let them manage their bookings online. 94% of customers would consider switching to businesses with online booking, so you want to make sure you’re on the right end of that statistic!
By using online booking software that lets customers create accounts, they can store their payment information for faster checkouts, easily manage past and future bookings, and rebook with your business.
Having easy access to a customer’s booking history also makes sending personalized offers and reengaging customers who haven’t booked with your swim school in a while easy.
Speaking of re-engaging customers, improving your customer nurture process is another effective way to increase customer retention for your swim school. The goal of a nurture process is to keep customers engaged, keep your business on the top of their minds, and provide valuable content, so you're the first swim school they think of when they are ready to buy (or buy again).
Steps to improving your customer nurture process include
One of the most effective ways to retain customers is by incentivizing them to stay. Customers spend, on average, 67% more when they’re in loyalty programs that reward them every time they book.
While they’re not a quick fix to customer retention issues, in the long run, customer loyalty programs can be an incredibly effective and incredibly lucrative, program to implement.
The easiest way to retain customers is to sell swim lessons in packages. This keeps them returning to your business for the length of their package (eg. 5 lessons) and gives you multiple opportunities to wow them with high-quality lessons and excellent customer service. Once they’ve experienced the value your business offers multiple times, it’s also much easier to convince them to rebook.
Ultimately, every time a customer books a swim lesson with you, they’ve made a choice not to book with one of your competitors. Selling in packages reduces the number of times a customer has to make this choice, and therefore the number of opportunities you could potentially lose out to a rival swim school.
71% of customers don’t return after a bad customer experience, so another easy way to increase customer retention in your swim school is to focus on providing excellent customer service.
We’ve gone into more depth on how to improve customer service in your swim school in this blog post, but some of the key takeaways are
Personalizing a customer’s experience makes them feel valued, and a valued customer is more likely to be a loyal customer. Use appointment management software that lets you store customer information, so you don’t have to go through the same onboarding questions every time. Always personalize emails and messages with the clients' names, and offer lessons tailored to the student’s needs and skill level.
Investing time into building relationships with your customers is another effective way to increase customer retention in your swim school.
Tips for building a good relationship with clients include
Lastly, the best way to increase customer retention is to make it easy for customers to stay a customer! Introducing online booking options gives customers a fast and convenient way to book swim lessons.
Look for an online booking software that lets customers quickly rebook the same appointment or the same instructor to increase your chances of a repeat sale.
You might have noticed a common theme through these customer retention tips — convenience. If you can find ways to make it more convenient for your customers to access your services, you will notice an increase in repeat bookings. Because, at the end of the day, customers want convenience and will go to any business that offers it in spades.
Are you looking to implement online booking options for your mobile swim school? Book a call with an expert to learn more about MarketBox, the only appointment management software specifically designed for in-home and mobile appointments.
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