Running an e-commerce business, it is inevitable to lose some customers at some point. This can be quite frustrating, especially if they were frequent visitors. People can leave for a variety of reasons, and it is up to you to find out why. Here are five steps to take to gain back customers you lost.
Find Out Why They Left
Discovering why customers left is the first step in developing strategies to win them back to your business. The most common reasons why customers leave include high prices, poor service, products or services that don’t meet their needs, or lack of innovation. To find out which of these factors made your customers leave, simply talk to some customers who stopped visiting your e-commerce store and implement strategies that will remedy these difficulties. You could consider sending them a short survey or simply reach out by phone.
Make the Necessary Changes
Once you find out why customers left your business, the next step involves making the changes and improvements needed to make customers return and preventing other customers from leaving as well. You can accomplish this feat by employing more staff members, training your current team to serve customers better, increasing or changing the stock you are selling, finding cheaper suppliers for your goods or even moving to a new location.
Announce Changes and Improvements
Let your customers know about any changes or improvements that you have made to your e-commerce business, to your site, prices or assortment. For instance, you could use social media to announce a new site, send out a mass email using a service like mailchimp to your customer base to inform customers about new products or services, and even use television and other media like YouTube to advertise your new developments.
Reduce Costs or Increase Value
Customers who leave your business due to price may have a hard time equating what they are paying versus the value they are receiving from you. If you want to win back these customers, you will need to either lower your prices or increase the value they get for the money they pay. Once you do, you will soon see the customers begin to return to your e-store.
Assure Customers That Your Company Will be Different
After you have made the necessary changes, let customers who have returned know that your products and services will be different and better going forward and that you will do your best to ensure that they never have to leave again. It may take a while for previous patrons to stop by again, so be patient and still offer great service and products.
Make Customers Feel Important
Implementing some kind of loyalty program for your e-commerce business may be another effective way to retain customers. Offer discounts to long-time customers, send out birthday cards and provide them with other benefits. When customers feel like they matter, they are more likely to stick around and spread the word.
Provide Better Shipping Options
Customers these days expect faster shipping times, excellent packaging and an awesome unboxing experience worth sharing on platforms such as YouTube. Not offering fast, competitive shipping times, or high shipping fees, will generally lead to disappointments. At first, customers may make a few purchases on your site if you truly offer something unique or hard to get, but eventually shipping could be a bottleneck for returning customers.
Working with an e-commerce order fulfillment provider like Floship can help you bring your shipping to a whole new level. Floship stores your inventory in either Hong Kong or Shenzhen, China. Our software integrates seamlessly with over 65 different e-commerce platforms, such as Shopify, WooCommerce and Magento and is furthermore fully automated. No manual syncing required. When orders come in, our warehouse will be notified immediately and parcels will be pick-packed accordingly. Floship furthermore ships at competitive rates due to special agreements made with our logistics partners.
If you are looking for a custom solution, per customer, per country or region, Floship has got you covered. Reach out for more information. We would love to understand your business needs and give you a free consultation on how to scale your business and gain back lost customers because of shipping.
In Conclusion
When you take the time to listen to feedback and improve your business, people will be impressed by your customer service. Learn from past mistakes and aim to do better. Not only will you win back your old customers, but you may earn the business of some new ones as well.
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