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What is customer retention?
Customer retention is absolutely key when it comes to building loyalty amongst your clients in your massage therapy practice, and ensuring that you have a steady flow of clients coming through your doors. Any guide will tell you that it should be a prioritized marketing tip, as it promotes long-term relationships, and safeguards the longevity of your practice. Regardless of the size of your clinic, or how long you’ve been in the business, it is critical that you consider customer retention to ensure that clients choose you over competitors. While there are many different ways to do this, and each way is more beneficial for some organizations than others, you should aim to keep clients happy and work to provide the highest value and quality of care. This means revising your packages, deals, and overall services, and ensuring that you offer something unique in comparison to other massage businesses in the market. You can increase customer satisfaction, increase repurchases, promote positive word of mouth, and work towards keeping a solid client base.
Ways customer retention help sustain your massage practice
There are several ways that customer retention can benefit your massage therapy business and lower expenses, and if you aren’t convinced, consider the following advantages.
Provides higher customer lifetime value
Customer lifetime value refers to the total value of your earnings each time a client books an appointment. Naturally, as clients book more and more sessions, this value increases and indicates a strong and loyal professional relationship. Customer retention is the easiest way to increase these lifetime values, and it ensures that you have clients for your present and future.
Lesser client management stress
When you retain your clients, you get to know them pretty well and know the ins and outs of their preferences and schedules. It’s great to build this familiarity and make it past the tricky onboarding stage where there’s a far higher risk of misunderstandings and mistakes.
Higher revenue
As you retain customers, you’re also likely to gain higher revenue from year to year. You have greater stability in regard to your regular appointments, and thus, also in regard to your profits. And as you know, higher revenue is always welcome, as you can invest in more resources and technology to improve your services.
Free word of mouth
Loyal clients, who are evidently happy with your services and the level of care you provide, are far more likely to recommend you to friends and family with no strings attached. Reviews from current clients also always contribute to greater credibility and reliability in regard to your business! Others can be reminded that your services were held in high regard, and are likely to hit you up!
Reduces cost of customer acquisition
It can be very time-consuming, and honestly quite draining, to work towards acquiring new customers. You may find yourself spending weeks attending to a promising lead, only for this to fall through in no time flat. This can happen quite often with a high number of customer turnovers, where you have no choice but to expand efforts in looking for new clients. However, focusing on customer retention cuts out this painful process and allows you to keep numbers high with a loyal base.
Builds referrals and loyalty
Speaking of, perhaps the most important aspect of customer retention is the loyalty it promotes amongst clients. Building loyalty means that customers are likely to choose your services over others, even when times get tough. They value your relationship as a whole and will continue to stick by you, which is always appreciated. Increasing referrals is also essential in having clients be more likely to turn to your clinic, and making it effective in reducing no shows.
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Tips to retain your massage clients
Now that you’re aware of the importance of customer retention, and the many benefits it can offer you, it’s important that you consider implementing the following tips to retain massage clients.
Facilitate a calming environment
Naturally, clients are heading to your services to relax and unwind, away from the chaos of everyday life. As a result, you need to ensure your environment is calming with light colors, natural lighting, and a soothing ambiance. If you want to know more information, consider viewing our guide on tips to create a relaxing environment in a massage clinic.
Offer good customer service
The easiest way to reel in clients and keep them there is to offer top-notch customer service. Clients need to know that you’re able to actually listen and provide for their needs and that if any issues were to arise, you can offer valuable support when needed.
Have a good relationship with clients
While you are a business, it’s important that you work to maintain a strong professional relationship with clients. It doesn’t always have to be impersonal, and showing clients that you care about their needs and lives is a nice touch that can set you apart from competitors.
Offer welcome packs and thank you gifts
A little goes a long way, meaning that offering welcome packs and thank you gifts is a lovely gesture that can boost the quality of your services. This doesn’t need to be extravagant or cut into your budget, but it provides customers with a sense of appreciation and comfort that increases satisfaction and referrals.
Simplify your appointment booking process
With the right software for massage therapy practices, you can simplify your appointment booking processes, which makes it all the more hassle-free for clients to get involved with your services. Automation allows you to fit in as many clients as your resources allow, and without eating into valuable time.
Follow up after every appointment
It’s always good practice to touch base with your clients to make note of areas you can improve, as well as the areas that you did well. This also serves as a useful time to remind clients of the value of your services, and how much you enjoyed meeting with them. Doing so works to increase professional relationships, which is always ideal!
Engage through emails and social media
Make sure to be active across all social media channels and in emails to show that you’re engaged, and up to date with the latest trends and news. It also provides you with the chance to showcase your knowledge and expertise, which is highly advantageous.
Should you follow negative customer retention strategies?
Negative customer retention refers to when a business purposely ends its relationship with some of its customers. And you may be shocked to hear this because after all, you’re trying to retain customers, not lose them! However, it’s important to realize that you can’t make everyone happy, and sometimes you need to be honest with yourself and acknowledge that your service may not be a good fit for everyone. For example, if a customer isn’t happy with the quality of care you provide, even after attempts to resolve the issues at hand, sometimes it’s best to let them go to prevent more negative reviews. Especially for clients who attempt to find loopholes in your policies, or unfairly disadvantage other loyal customers! These cases should be treated with care and revised on an individual basis to ensure that all clients have an equal chance to access your services. On the other hand, you may have customers that are great but unfortunately fall in a declining market segment. This means that continuing to serve these clients is no longer profitable, in which case, you may also need to evaluate whether they are dropped for the sake of maintaining profit and growth elsewhere.
Take home message
Hopefully, you now have a solidified understanding when it comes to customer retention within your massage therapy practice. The importance of maintaining a loyal customer base should never be underestimated, and utilizing our tips and tricks can work significantly to your advantage. You can generate much higher revenue, secure the longevity of your practice, as well as reduce expenses and minimize tax deductions to invest and add value to your practice elsewhere. It's essential in elevating the quality of your services, and ensuring that you stand out from competitors in the massage market.
Further reading:
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