How to Increase Retention Rate for Appointment Business?

Want to build a successful business with a loyal customer base that keeps coming back? Well, Businesses, big or small, are always looking for new customers to keep their booking calendar full. Thus, whether you’re a salon owner, fitness coach, or consultant, getting new clients is just the first step.

No matter how much of a fortune you spend on attracting new customers, if you can’t keep them, it all goes in vain. After all, repeat customers spend 67% more than new customers, and customer retention plays a major role in this. 

In simple terms, Customer retention is all about making sure your current customers continue booking with you. Even stats say that businesses that value customer retention over attracting new ones are 60% more profitable.

That’s why we’ve come up with the 7 proven strategies to boost customer retention for your appointment based business. So now it’s time to turn your one time clients into loyal customers. 

What Is Customer Retention and Why It Matters?

Customer retention is all about making sure your existing customer comes back to you instead of moving on to other competitors. In simple words, Customer retention is a way to build stronger relationships with clients so they do business with you for a longer period of time. 

In short, the customer retention rate is a measure of customer loyalty. Increasing customer retention rates can maintain a long term relationship, avoiding the need to always find new ones.

It matters a lot for appointment based businesses, as getting a new customer can be 5 to 25 times more costly than holding on to an existing one. In fact, a mere 5% increase in retention can skyrocket your profits with a hike of 25% to 95%! 

Here are a few reasons why customer retention is important for appointment based businesses:

• Continuous revenue as loyal customers are likely to book more appointments.
• Reduced customer acquisition costs by retaining customers.
• Better customer lifetime value.
• Boosts brand value and credibility.
• Easy to upsell and cross sell to existing repeat customers.
• Less marketing costs with more referrals directly from your customers.
• More happy customers means more stronger customer base.
• Reduced customer churn with client retention.

With these many benefits, it’s proven that increasing customer retention rates is the best way to grow your appointment based business. 

That’s why, before jumping straight to strategies, let’s understand how to calculate your customer retention rate and how much work you need to improve it. 

How Do You Calculate Customer Retention Rate? 

Now, it’s time to check what your customer retention rate is. It’s simple. 

While customer retention rate can be different based on your industry, the average is around 70-80%. The higher the rate, the better the customer satisfaction and loyalty. 

This is the formula for calculating CRR(Customer Retention Rate):  [(E-N)/S] x 100 = CRR.

Looks a bit confusing? No worries! Here’s a simple breakdown for calculating your customer retention rate for your appointment business: 

• First, you need to keep a record of how many new customers you got over a period of time. (Remember this period of time can be a month, quarter or year as you wish.) 
• Next, note how many customers you have at the end of the period. (Including both new and returning ones.)
• Now just use this formula to get your customer retention rate: 

[(Customers at the end – New customers) / Customers at the start] * 100 = CRR

• The answer will be your current customer retention rate. 

Remember, the higher the rate, the higher the growth for your appointment business. If you get a lower rate, don’t worry. We have some of the tested and best proven strategies to skyrocket your customer retention rates. 

7 Customer Retention Strategies for Appointment-Based Businesses

Here are the ways to retain customers with the best proven and tested customer retention tactics. 

1. Deliver Outstanding First Experience

The first impression is the last impression. Surprisingly, this quote applies to both the person and the service. A smooth booking process and excellent service are all you need to make your customer’s first experience outstanding. 

For delivering a perfect first experience, you must focus on personalization. Offering a personalised experience makes clients feel they are valued and important. After all, everyone loves feeling valued and recognized. 

To perfect your first impression and customer experience, you can start by personalizing your first step of your customer contact.

It’s always good to look after customer convenience. That’s why you can offer multiple options to schedule your appointment bookings. Also, make sure your appointment and booking process is simple yet engaging. 

One of the best ways to do so is by offering options to book your service directly from your website, making it available 24/7. 

You can use BookingPress for that. It can help you automate this whole appointment booking process smoothly. With its responsive, fully customizable, and modern online booking forms that match your brand’s feel and vibe perfectly. 

2. Use Automated Reminders and Follow Ups

To avoid starting off on the wrong foot, always personalize your communication. Whether it comes to the booking process or follow ups messages, always keep your clients first.  

Automated reminders and follow ups are one of the best ways to offer a personalized experience. You can set up an automated appointment booking system or plugin, which is both cost efficient and easy to use. 

It allows you to send personalized, timely reminders and notifications to everyone on time via SMS, email, WhatsApp, and more. If you ask us, we would recommend automating your reminders via SMS as the most effective medium. 

Besides customer retention rate, automating your reminders and follow ups can also: 

• Reduces no shows.
• Automates confirmation and follow up appointments.
• Personalizes customer experience.
• Cost effective compared to sending each and every message manually.
• No room left for errors as everything is automated.

Once again, BookingPress WordPress appointment booking plugin is the best choice for all that. This plugin offers a hassle free appointment booking experience. 

To boost customer retention rate for your appointment business, it always sends on time, fully automated notifications. You can automate your communication via email, WhatsApp, or SMS notifications.

3. Use Membership And Loyalty Program

Although this may seem like an obvious strategy, how smartly you can implement it makes the difference here. 

Running a membership or loyalty program is a great way to reward your loyal customers and show new clients the benefits of coming back. A smart loyalty program like Sephora Beauty Insider can foster a long term relationship and encourage repeat appointments. 

Here are a few suggestions to run a membership or loyalty program smartly to increase customer retention rates: 

• Get straightforward and clear about the benefits your clients will get.
• Try to provide maximum personalized experiences for every client.
• Build your reward strategy based on milestones.
• Put referral incentives into focus; this way, you won’t just get new clients, but will also make your current clients more connected to your business.
• Add gamification elements to the program when possible.

To get you even more in the mood for serving your customers, we have a lot of marketing and advertising strategies for your beauty establishment, nail, or hair salon.

4. Get The Best Out Of Your Social Media Engagement

Bring your brand to life with a video, inspiring story, or workshop. It’s easy to do so with social media capabilities. 

Social media is a very specific environment that lives by its own rules, but one thing is undeniable. They can spur people into action, particularly when they feel influenced by peer pressure or motivated by other triggers. 

Here, you can get really creative to encourage people to come to your salon or book a course with you. Just add some trustworthy data, publish behind the scenes videos or stories, showcase the modern type of hairstyle you can create, or think of other engaging elements to captivate the interest of your customers (and prospects!). 

It’s much easier to do so when you already have a client base that follows you on various social media channels.

5. Personalized Discounts & Coupons For Repeat Clients

Sometimes, the simple gesture of offering a personalised discount and coupons can also impact your client retention rates. 

Well, we don’t think there’s anyone out there who doesn’t love discounts. 

Everyone loves a great deal, especially if they are exclusively for them or they’ve earned it. By offering discounts, coupons, and even points can help show your appreciation for their continuous support. 

You can offer personalized discounts based on the customers’ purchase history or special occasions.

This strategy works way better during quieter months of business. To encourage more bookings whether it’s for salon, spa or fitness, you can attract your first customers back to you with customized discounts. 

6. Collect Customer Feedback

You need to understand customer needs and behaviors. Hear the opinion of your customers, run regular surveys, and act upon the feedback you get. 

Ask them directly what they are looking for in your salon/school/clinic, and what they like and don’t like. It’s one of the most organic and easiest ways to get the feedback of your customers and think of the strategies that will entice customers to stay with you.

7. Track Website Metrics To Improve Retention

Wondering how this checking your website performance is related to retention rate? 

Very simple. It helps you understand how bookings are happening on your website or via external platforms, what potential barriers are for clients, and other insights. When you measure traffic and engagement on your site, you can get this sort of data as well.

Even your regular clients refer to the booking channel they are used to (e.g. your website), and you can identify potentially problematic areas in the whole booking and payment cycle. 

Google Analytics is one of the best ways to measure this performance. Are you sure you’ve already got a hang of it? Do your best to befriend with the solution, at least because its latest version, GA4, that replaces the current one, takes a learning curve! 

Still, choosing the booking software for your service business? We are here to help with many curated lists:

• 10 Best Wellness Booking Software
• Best Booking Software for Cosmetic Consultant
• Best Online Booking Systems for Makeup Artists
• Best WordPress Photographer Booking Plugins

Conclusion: How To Ensure Long Term Customer Retention?

In a nutshell, ensuring a long term relationship with your customer is the key to increasing customer retention rates. 

While it might seem you should put all your energy into making your clients happy to boost your retention rate, it’s not all so one sided. There’s so much more to it than appears. 

Here are some main takeaways from the blog to maintain long term customer retention: 

• Excellent customer service is a must.
• Personalized experience makes the first and last impression.
• Value the convenience of customers with easy self booking.
• Build relationships with the community and loyalty programs.
• Gather feedbacks and apply them to build trust.
• Encourage existing customers to refer new customers with rewards.
• Eye catching discounts and offers.

FAQs:

What is the customer retention rate?

Customer retention rate is the percentage of customers that shows how often a customer keeps coming back to you. It is simply a key metric for understanding how well your appointment business is growing and how loyal your customer base is. 

What is a good retention rate for a business?

While it differs from industry to industry, a good customer retention rate is between the range of 70% to 80%. However, some businesses also aim for 90% of customer retention rates, such as SaaS businesses. 

Why is the retention rate important?

Retention rate helps you understand how well your business is performing over time. Mostly, a higher retention rate is a sign of: 

• Increased revenue
• Reduced marketing cost
• Better customer loyalty 
• Great service or product

What is the value of customer retention?

In simple terms, the higher the customer retention, the better the business is performing. Retained customers are most likely to repeat booking your services and might spend 67% more than new customers. 

Why focus on customer retention?

Here are the reasons why you should focus on customer retention: 

• Cost savings on marketing and ads.
• More revenue and profit.
• Positive word of mouth marketing.
• Strong, loyal customer base.
• Improves customer insights.

What is a key benefit of retaining existing customers?

Here are the key benefits of retaining existing customers: 

• Lower costing compared to attracting new customers.
• Existing customers are likely to spend more.
• Retaining existing customers means building stronger brand loyalty.
• Improves customer lifetime value.
• Easy upselling and cross selling.