You got the customer in the door, now what?

You’ve done some good marketing and gotten customers in your door. Now what? How are you going to keep them coming back? According to this Forbes.com article, your task now is to make the customer “feel at home”—whatever that may mean for your product, service or store.

Well, maybe it’s not feeling “at home” as much as it is feeling visible, acknowledged, welcomed and appreciated as a customer. The trick is to make sure that customer knows you know he or she has been with you before, and that you say a genuine hello and, for Pete’s sakes, a genuine good-bye and thank you when they leave.

You’ll also want to do what you can toward making sure whatever that repeat customer is likely to buy is available to them and without hassle.  If you plan a promotion for “new customers only”, you might want to make sure that existing customers get in on the deal as well.

Any training in customer service management for your staff needs to give special focus on the returning customer.