{"id":352,"date":"2020-09-07T11:31:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-07T16:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.growwithwill.com\/?p=352"},"modified":"2020-08-06T06:08:49","modified_gmt":"2020-08-06T11:08:49","slug":"how-to-thank-your-customers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.growwithwill.com\/how-to-thank-your-customers\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Thank Your Customers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Looking for ways to show your customers that you appreciate them? Not sure what the best way to show them in a meaningful way is? Then stick with me until the end of this article, because I&#8217;m going to go over seven ways that you can say thanks to your customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By the end of this article, you&#8217;re going to have a ton of potential ideas that you can start to use today to increase your customer retention and expand your lifetime value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe width=\"700\" height=\"395\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CXffd_KuDII\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons aligncenter is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link has-background has-vivid-green-cyan-background-color\" href=\"https:\/\/www.growwithwill.com\/customer-success-jumpstart\/\" style=\"border-radius:5px\" rel=\"https:\/\/www.growwithwill.com\/customer-success-jumpstart\/\">Get my Free Customer Success Jumpstart Kit!<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Method 1: Handwritten Thank You Notes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The first way you can show thanks to your customers is, with a good old-fashioned Thank You Note. This is an often overlooked old-fashioned method that still works today. Back when we were in our first year of business, we had about 200 or so clients. And so, what we did for an entire day was we sat down and wrote meaningful thank you notes for every single one of our customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In these notes, we focused on truly expressing our sincere gratitude that these 200 clients had taken a leap of faith to try us out and use our service. We also try to include personal notes for customers that we remember particular conversations on. Or just things about their life that we had discovered over the course of the buying process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s a great way for you to build rapport with your customers. And I recommend that if you&#8217;re going to do this, you do so either a couple of weeks after they have initially been onboarded or a couple months before their renewal. This way, your thank you note is going to come across as genuine, as opposed to potentially disingenuous, if you were to, for example, send it a week before their renewal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When we started doing this with our customers, we got really positive feedback. In fact, they would mention this in conversations months later when they had already renewed noting how we were the only vendor of theirs that actually sent them a handwritten thank you note. If you don&#8217;t like writing handwritten notes or you don&#8217;t have the time to do so, you can always hire somebody like an intern to do so, or alternatively there&#8217;s even services that essentially train robots to write like people, and then you can send it to your customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of those companies is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.handwrytten.com\/\">handwrytten.com<\/a>. A few years ago, I tested them out and they&#8217;re pretty good. But at that time, they still had some things to work out. They&#8217;d probably have improved at this point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another company is known as Postable. They do a very similar service. Ultimately, the important thing is that you actually commit to doing it terms of showing your thanks to your customers with a handwritten note.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Method 2: Personalized Thank You Video<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>My second way for thanking your customers is to record thank you videos. This can be super easy with a screen recording software like Loom, which I referenced in prior articles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But pretty much, all you need to do is spend a couple minutes and create a video for your customer. This can be in response to a customer support issue they have, it can be just to check in with them, or it can be to share some updates of new features that you&#8217;ve released with your product or service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Back when I was on the front lines, I would do this for anybody that constantly wrote into customer support, because I always found it way easier to visually show them, me walking through this particular solution, than to just to provide them with the written instructions as to how to solve their problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s also a good time for you to just simply say &#8220;thank you so much for your question and for using our product&#8221;. That singular sentence of appreciation can go a long way, especially when it&#8217;s compounded over time. Because they&#8217;ll start to feel like they&#8217;re building a relationship with not only you, but also your company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Two keys to highly effective personalized videos. The first one is to say the person&#8217;s name at the beginning and end of the video, it&#8217;ll make them feel really good. And the second thing is to make sure that you are keeping things relatable and that you are down to earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Authentic videos are always way better than super scripted ones. So, don&#8217;t script out a video of what you&#8217;re going to say. It looks just really bad. And also, it&#8217;s just tacky. People like it when you are authentic. So, stay true to yourself and you are a company&#8217;s values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Method 3: Give Company Swag<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The third way to thank your customers is to give them company swag. This really depends as to whether or not your company is cool. Just kidding. Actually, it really just depends on if your company gives cool swag. And what I mean by that is if your company just gives pencils or things like that, no one&#8217;s going to care. But if you create things like custom pop sockets or koozies, those sorts of things can be super popular with customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The key thing is that you align your swag giveaways to particular user milestones. So, that can be something like the hundredth time they log in, it can be completing their first customer success survey, it can be completing their early renewal. Whatever the key thing that you want your customer to be doing, that can be a great way for you to build in an incentive loop for them to constantly be communicating with you, sharing their feedback and continuing to love your brand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The purpose of swag is to make sure that people are thinking about your brand, even when they&#8217;re not necessarily using it. So, you got to make sure that the swag that you&#8217;re getting is actually cool and not that you just think it&#8217;s cool. The easiest way to test this is to just order a small batch, see how it&#8217;s received from your customers. And then if it&#8217;s not received well, test out another product, and so on. A lot of these swag companies will actually give you free samples as well so that can be a great way for you to physically actually feel for yourself and ask yourself whether or not it&#8217;s cool swag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons aligncenter is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link has-background has-vivid-green-cyan-background-color\" href=\"https:\/\/www.growwithwill.com\/customer-success-jumpstart\/\" style=\"border-radius:5px\" rel=\"https:\/\/www.growwithwill.com\/customer-success-jumpstart\/\">Get my Free Customer Success Jumpstart Kit!<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Method 4: Host Intimate Small Group Events<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The fourth suggestion I have for thanking your customers is to host small group local events. The best way to do this is with a combination of clients, as well as potential new clients. That way you can get your bang for your buck in terms of meeting new people and connecting them with one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In my past experiences, what I&#8217;ve done is I&#8217;ve essentially looked at an area where I have a lot of customers and I&#8217;ve put together either a free workshop or a low cost workshop for people to come together, learn from each other, connect with each other and advance their professional development. So, these growth and professional development opportunities or something in my space that people are often looking for, because they don&#8217;t often get to communicate with other professionals in their field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So what I like to do is, I like to take a customer of mine that I know is doing really cool things with our product that&#8217;s related to another thing in the industry, and essentially put everybody in the same room and share what they&#8217;ve been doing along with other panelists. So, it allows me to plug my company while in the same process, allowing my customers to learn from each other and also my superstar customers, a platform to share the cool things that they&#8217;re doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The reality is that everybody loves feeling like they&#8217;re part of a group. And so, when you create these small groups, intimate events that essentially allows for some time true networking to occur. And it&#8217;s also supernatural and it makes everybody feel super special because these opportunities don&#8217;t happen very often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They&#8217;re too used to conferences and workshops that are hundreds of people in which they&#8217;re just a number in the overall scheme of things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Method 5: Give more than what your customer has bought.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>My fifth suggestion for thanking your customers is to always give way more than what they paid for. The best story that I can tell you here is to be a smoothie shop that I lived next to that would often give samples of the new things that they&#8217;re creating in their menu, regardless of what your order was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I would just go in for a smoothie and they&#8217;d actually ended up giving me a smoothie and a half because they were often testing some new, fresh fruit idea and it was just a super great place that always made me feel like they cared about me as a customer and they cared about my feedback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another example of great value is I had an accountant that would always respond to my questions via email within the hour on weekdays. And even on weekends consistently, he was so transparent upfront with the value that he was providing that he even just straight up answered my question when I asked him whether or not I even needed his services the following year and told me to do it myself. And so, what I did was, I actually left him a Yelp review, which I never do for anybody, just because of the fact that he had delivered so much value upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Personally, when I started out in sales, I would always throw complimentary trainings or extra value that I could think of to help out my customers as they started out with our particular service, because I knew we were the new kids on the block and we needed to prove ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The key thing here is to get in the habit of giving, giving, and then giving some more. It&#8217;ll help your customers feel like a hundred bucks while also building up your tribe of super fans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It could be simple as free delivery, a discount on their next order, a thank you note, or even a little welcome kit when they&#8217;re first getting onboarded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Method 6: Dedicate a day or a week to spotlighting your customers.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>These sixth way that I have for you when it comes to thanking your customers, is to dedicate a day or a week to your customers. What you&#8217;re going to want to do here is you&#8217;re going to want to think about ways to spotlight your customers. Back when we were starting out at any major milestone stone, I would essentially tell a new customer story with all of my customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In other words, when we had our first customer, our 10th customer, our hundredth customer, our thousand customer, pretty much I would write about their stories and share them with all of my customers. I would talk about things like the problems they had when they started out with us, the things that we worked through and also talk about specifically what made them such a great customer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By doing so, I signal to all my other customers, the things that we valued as a business in terms of great customers, and also allowed them to think about different applications of how they might potentially use our product in the future. So, by taking some time to spotlight my customers, it was a great way to create a win-win in which customers felt super special because they were on show and tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And also, other customers started learning about potential ways they could use our company services that they weren&#8217;t using them before. If there&#8217;s things like employee appreciation week, then there should definitely be things like customer appreciation week. So, the easiest way to do this is you can either dedicate a set day in every single month for this or you can set aside a week and essentially plan some key campaigns that you can start sending with your customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You also may find it helpful to combine some of the things we&#8217;ve gone over in this video like the thank you notes or the videos, as you&#8217;re telling these particular stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Method 7: Give unique gifts that help local communities.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The last suggestion I have for you when it comes to methods for saying thanks to your customers is to give unique gifts that help local communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I actually had this happen to me more recently back when the global situation was first coming down and everybody was starting to work from home, a company that we work with reached out to me to, (a) make sure that we were okay. And (b) to ask if I would like them to make a donation to the local food bank on our behalf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so, I thought that was a super great way to essentially give back to the community while also building my loyalty to this brand because they aligned to something that aligned to in terms of my personal values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another example is, a few years ago, we had an organization that was going through a tragedy at that time. And so, we did was, he asked some of our users from that organization about their favorite local dessert shop. And we essentially had that delivered to them that same day as just a condolence of the things that they were going through at that time. Ultimately, we all like to build up our communities or think about our community. And so, if you can think about ways to connect it back to your customers, local communities, it can be a great way for you to show your thanks for your customers as well as others in their particular community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Big takeaways<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>There are two things I want you to remember from this article. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol><li>The first one is that when it comes to saying thanks, it really doesn&#8217;t matter how much money you spend on your customers. It&#8217;s more about how genuine your thank you is.<\/li><li>The second thing I want you to remember is to do things that are unconventional and help your customers both directly and indirectly. Ultimately, it&#8217;s not about you when you&#8217;re saying thanks. It&#8217;s about your customer. And so, if you can find ways to impact them or those around them, it can be a great way to show your gratitude.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>If you found this article helpful, be sure to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.growwithwill.com\/subscribe\">check out my YouTube channel<\/a> to get new videos every single week I&#8217;ll help take you from zero to self-starter as you grow your business, get more customers, and hone your business acumen. Also, feel free to share it with anybody that you think might benefit from learning about these seven methods for how to thank your customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s it for this time. In the next article, I&#8217;m going to talk more about customer success and how to build customer loyalty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons aligncenter is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link has-background has-vivid-green-cyan-background-color\" href=\"https:\/\/www.growwithwill.com\/customer-success-jumpstart\/\" style=\"border-radius:5px\" rel=\"https:\/\/www.growwithwill.com\/customer-success-jumpstart\/\">Get my Free Customer Success Jumpstart Kit!<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Looking for ways to show your customers that you appreciate them? Not sure what the best way to show them in a meaningful way is? Then stick with me until the end of this article, because I&#8217;m going to go over seven ways that you can say thanks to your customers. By the end of &#8230; <a title=\"How to Thank Your Customers\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.growwithwill.com\/how-to-thank-your-customers\/\" aria-label=\"More on How to Thank Your Customers\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.growwithwill.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.growwithwill.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.growwithwill.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.growwithwill.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.growwithwill.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.growwithwill.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.growwithwill.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.growwithwill.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.growwithwill.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.growwithwill.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}