Treat them right and they keep coming back.
It has taken me many years to learn a simple lesson. There are
very few things in life that we are able to directly change. We
cannot change our colleagues, the Government, the weather or our
customers. We cannot change our spouses or our children. If we
wish to influence any of those things we must begin by changing
ourselves.
If you work in any organisation there are probably co-workers
who you do not get long with as well as you might. No doubt they
annoy and irritate you. But have you stopped to consider what
might happen if you treated them differently? Would they react
to you differently and become less annoying and nicer people?
Perhaps it is worth a try, maybe they react towards you in the
manner they do because of the way you behave towards them.
Often it is easy to blame someone else for a situation when we
are equally to blame ourselves. Even if a situation is not our
"fault" it is still probably worth changing our own behaviour
towards someone else if that will produce an effect that we
want. Even if the change just leaves us feeling better within
ourselves knowing that we have done whatever we were able to do
to improve things.
How do you treat your customers? When was the last time that you
sent them a simple note to say "Thank you for your custom and
support", have you ever sent such a note? How would you feel
towards a supplier who sent you such a letter?
When was the last time you asked your customers if there was
anything that you could do for them? I do not mean as a veiled
message, which really means "is there anything else we can sell
you." Simply and genuinely ask if there is anything you can do
for them without expecting anything in return.
Will some people take advantage? Probably but I am afraid that
is just life. Those people were always going to take advantage
in some way. What is important is the goodwill you generate
among the majority of your customers. If your customers feel
that you care about them they are far less likely to change
supplier and will probably purchase more from you. It will
always be cheaper to keep existing customers than to find new
ones.
Why not just try the idea out with a few of your best customers
and see what happens?