How To Make Your BEST Customers Even Better ……

The recent confirmation by the FCA* to ensure that insurance companies can’t disadvantage loyal clients in favour of new clients, brings home the simple truth that often it’s too easy to take our BEST customers or clients for granted.  That’s why in these challenging times, we should be working even harder to cement our client relationships.  Remember, your BEST customers are the customers or clients who you profit from most, and where you have a sound relationship too. 

It’s a win-win relationship with your best customers. You appreciate the customer and they appreciate you. But because they don’t moan... because they pay on time... because they treat you and your staff with respect… sometimes they get very little attention from you. 

And, in reality, if you gave them more of yourself, more of your time, you’d end up getting more business from them. More than any other time, now is the time to really look after your best customers. 

 In many respects, your best customers become more vulnerable because they are such good clients. 

Ideally, what you need to do, figuratively speaking, is to create a concrete wall around them so no other business can get close to them. In reality, you do this just by being the good business you are, but that concrete wall doesn’t have a roof on. You need to add a concrete roof otherwise one of your competitors could get a large ladder, scale the walls and get to them. 

So how do you do that? Well, this is the best part: one key retention strategy is to make sure, twice a year, you take your top customers out for lunch (80% of your profit will come from 20% of your customers). That’s all. Yes, while it might not be feasible right now, you can plan it in for later this year but in the meantime, call them and have a quality chat over the phone or zoom.

 In time, recognise their loyalty with lunch or dinner—not as a group of customers, but individually. 

Just ‘shoot the breeze’. You don’t have to ‘talk shop’ (the conversation will naturally lean towards their needs and your products/services anyway). Show real interest in them, their family, their hobbies. Find out the simple things, like when is their birthday, what's taking up their time at the moment or what are they passionate about. You’re looking to create a professional bond that’s as strong as super glue. And then, and only then, does your concrete roof start to take shape. Of course, it’s never fully built and there’s always a chance a competitor can ‘break in’ and steal the customer, but the closer you get to your best clients—the smaller the hole in the roof and the less chance your competitors will have. 

So challenge yourself. When did you last contact your best clients just to see how they are? Do let me know your stories in the comments below.

* FCA confirms measures to protect customers from the loyalty penalty in home and motor insurance markets The FCA’s September 2020 market study found that millions of home and motor insurance customers lose out if they renew repeatedly with their current providers. In 2018, 6 million loyal policy holders would have saved ￡1.2 billion had they paid the average price for their actual risk.