How much is your customer worth?
Apart from a few, most workshop owner operate a single location workshop, unless you have been operated for a long time, most of your customers are probably around a certain distant from the workshop, with a limited number of customers, how do you maximize your profit? Then comes the question of "how much is your customer worth?"
Put quite simply, Lifetime Value (LTV), the estimated revenue that a customer will generate during the entire span of their relationship with your business. It takes into account not only the initial purchase, but also how much a customer is likely to spend in the future as they purchase more products and services from you. Knowing this number will help you decide how much to invest to
- Acquire new customer including marketing, sales
- Decide on investment to increase the LTV by invest in customer relationship activities
So why is all this important? Well as stated above the majority of your customers are most likely in your area. Due to this fact it means you have a limit customer base so ensuring you keep them is extremely important. So losing customers can be quite harmful to your business.
So what can we do to increase the Lifetime Value of a customer. Well there are a couple of things we can do.
First, keeping in contact with the customer. Now im not saying message them constantly, but just a friendly reminder that still want to keep that relationship going. This could be as simple as sending out a Service Reminder or a follow up on a previous job.
Other ways you can also do this is through avenues like Upselling. You can also work upon the relationship you have with the customer. Perhaps offer a discount to them for bringing in new customers. Or starting a new service (wheel alignment for example, if you have not done so) to your customer base.
You can also try cross-selling, do you know a car washing business that you can trust and send customers to and have some kick-backs?
So these are only some of the ways you could approach this. Im sure there are other ways you can go about this!
Having a good loyal customer base is not only essential to your business existance but also provide great opportunities. Contact our support team to see how MechanicDesk can help you looking after your customers.