It costs much less to keep an existing customer than to find a new one. A happy or ‘satisfied’ customer is a valuable asset because they’ll generally repeatedly hand over their money (in exchange for an experience), and will spread the news of their great experience to the people they know.
As a venue owner, it’s important to make your customers say ‘wow’. If someone says it about your venue, they’re connecting with it on a personal and profitable level.
Personally, they’ve engaged in a relationship between themselves and your venue: they feel happy when they visit (and think about visiting) your venue.
This also means it’s a profitable connection as they are going to visit again and again (to feel the same happiness) to open their wallets again and again.
Golden rule: there’s a direct correlation between customer satisfaction and the amount of revenue a venue will produce.
To produce ‘wow’ moments, your venue’s customer service strategies must:
- Blow your competition out of the water,
- Make your customers feel like celebrities, and
- Promote positive word-of-mouth activity.
It takes surprisingly little to make this happen – all venues have the capacity to go 20% extra that delivers 80% of the results (and make people say the magic three letter word).
How do I increase customer service using social media?
The social web has the ability to add an extra layer to your ‘offline’ customer service strategies.
There’s a strong chance that most of your customers are ‘connected consumers’ and frequent social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram. This means you’ve got the ability to deliver some outstanding online customer service skills to them, via these channels. Examples of these strategies are:
- Spark a conversation with someone who was tagged in a photo at your venue (compliment them, or do something positive for them)
- Offer a benefit to your Foursquare Mayor, or a benefit to every customer who ‘checks in’ (Using Foursquare or Facebook)
- Ask for feedback about a particular event or product (and be prepared to act swiftly on any negative comments)
- Provide a Q and A time for your followers to ask anything about your chosen niche (for example, if you are a wine bar, offer a time where your followers can ask your subject matter experts [AKA wine-nerds] about wine)
- Offer a Twitter handle as a feedback channel (make sure you monitor it)
Learn more:
Improved customer service is obtained by executing the abovementioned strategies via organic community engagement strategies (Step 8 of this Action Plan).
See the Daily Social Media Management Manual for organic social media marketing tactics for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and Pinterest.