It's important for businesses to measure and understand customer sentiment, that's a given. Although there are many metrics from which to measure business success, customer satisfaction is a big one that cannot be ignored. 

Keeping your loyal customers coming through your doors is the lifeblood of your business. However, no matter what kind of business you manage or own, some of those loyal customers will choose not to return. This is known as customer attrition, or customer churn, and it should be kept under close watch.

Social media is rapidly overtaking traditional methods of marketing, serving as an all-in-one channel to advertise to, and communicate directly with, new and existing consumers in the same breath.

However, with 4.3 billion email accounts worldwide, building an email campaign is a smart and relatively uncomplicated way to keep customers in the loop. But before launching your first email campaign, you should take some important steps to secure a measure of success.

Most everyone now looks to the internet to give suggestions on any number of questions we might be asking, from where to go and what to see on our next vacation, to the nearest location of a quality gym, to something as basic as where to eat for dinner. 

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We all know that retaining current customers is much less expensive than acquiring new ones, and with the current competitive environment in the restaurant industry, it becomes that much more important. But how can you identify those customers who are at-risk of not returning? How can you engage them properly and convince them to return?

It’s common knowledge among business owners and marketers that keeping your current customers coming back through the door is much more efficient and less costly than acquiring new customers. In today’s competitive environment, consumers have more options than they can choose from. This is why restaurateurs and retail store owners should be concerned with not only attracting new customers, but keeping the ones that they already have.

Customer attrition is a natural occurrence in any business. No matter what you do, some customers will simply not return to your place of business. Whether this is a fault of your own or not, it is important to establish and execute an ongoing, measurable strategy to reduce customer attrition.  

In last week’s blog post, we discussed the importance of responding properly to negative online ratings and reviews using TACT. As important as this is, it is also important to respond to the positive ratings and reviews your business is receiving online.

You work hard to keep your restaurant business alive and growing. Part of that effort includes monitoring and improving your restaurant’s online ratings and reviews. All of this energy and determination makes it so much more upsetting when you visit one of the popular online ratings websites to see a scathing, negative review.

Your first inclination will most likely be to fire back with a defensive message. But doing so could have long-lasting damaging effects on the way the public views you and your business. Instead of quickly defending yourself and risking the appearance of not caring about your customers, take a deep breath, relax, and respond with TACT.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit...there is certainly no shortage of online channels to help you keep in close contact with your customers. But sometimes, having that many platforms can make it tough to keep track of things. To keep your customers coming back, you don't necessarily need to be an expert in all the latest social channels, you just have to find out where your customers congregate online, choose the biggest ones and keep current.

A robust and reliable analytics platform is central to the success of your business. Analytics will help you generate more customers, increase sales, gain insights into customer behavior and preferences, create detailed customer profiles, measure return on investment (ROI) and maximize those valuable marketing dollars.