4 Things You Can Do to Retain Customers for Your Car Title Loan Business
Friday, February 13, 2015, 6:00 AM | Leave Comment
The need to retain customers is critical for any business to succeed. Gone are the days when people had the luxury of monopolizing an area of business.
With the growth of the internet and the increased use of mobile technology, businesses have pushed the envelope with innovative ideas for gaining and retaining customer loyalty.
From a budget standpoint, it is more economical for small to medium sized businesses to reduce customer churn.
This is not only because new customers are likely to leave, but also because older customers who have helped you grow your business are more predictable and can be relied on to contribute to continued profitability.
Among the top reasons why customers will leave you are:
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You do not care what they think.
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You are disorganized.
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Your competition is offering a better product or service.
To retain your customers, you should consider doing the following:
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Always deliver what you promise
Build a reputation for always living up to your word. If you promise your customers that a loan will be processed in 24 hours, make sure you process it in even lesser time.
If you have a large team working for you, ensure their supervisors are monitoring performance to ensure that all customer loan applications and other issues are handled efficiently.
A good way to motivate your team to deliver is to provide incentives to team members who have the best record of living up to customer expectations.
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Build trust
There is already a negative perception that the car title loan business exists to milk money from needy people by overcharging on interests.
You can change this perception by building trust. You will need your customers’ future business. Therefore, it defeats the purpose if their cars are possessed due to unpaid loans. Give them advice on how they can manage their income better in order to service their current loan and get more loans.
If your customers have a pleasant experience, they will keep coming back and even refer more customers to you.
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Invest in good systems
A key reason that companies fail to provide good service to their customers is their lack of good systems.
Lack of systems leads to backlog and disorganization and will make your customers move to your competitors.
Invest in a good CRM system that will help you to:
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Store customer information in an organized electronic format.
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View customer loan application and payment history.
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Automate messages to customers regarding payment default, reward programs and other products.
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Improve your level of efficiency in service delivery.
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Conduct customer surveys
Do not wait around for customers to complain about their dissatisfaction.
Assuming you already have metrics in place that will ensure you deliver good service, create a questionnaire around those metrics.
For instance,
Metric 1: Process loans in 24 hours.
Survey Question: How do you rate our speed of processing your loan?
Answer:
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A. excellent
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B. fair
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C. bad
Depending on the answers you get to such questions, you can rate your performance and adjust accordingly.
Find out some of the surveys conducted by similar businesses in your area. If in San Jose for instance, do an online search for surveys conducted by San Jose car title loans businesses.
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Retaining your customers doesn’t need to be difficult. Start by doing the above 4 things and your customers will remain loyal to you.
Throw us a like at Facebook.com/doable.financeAbout the author
Yun Chow runs a client relations consultancy firm in California. He has helped turn around business practices from various industries which has helped with client retention and improved profitability. Chow’s latest client was a company that sells car title loans. Visit his site to read about steps taken by a Sunnyvale car title loans business to retain its customers.
