Are you paying too much to get your customers to return?

Very often, at hotels, restaurants, cinemas, theatres and retail businesses, I find that staff do not ask about signing up for the newsletter or the customer club, even though the company has invested a great deal in setting it up and running it.

I was recently in Stockholm and had booked a room at a hotel in a large Scandinavian chain, through the booking portal I usually use for stays and holidays abroad. When I arrive at the hotel and check in, I can see a flyer on the reception desk telling me about the chain's customer club and its app.

I look at the flyer while the receptionist looks at me, smiles and checks me in with the mail address from the booking portal's system – which is quite clearly not my personal address.

She does not ask whether I am interested in becoming a member of their customer club, or whether I have their app.

Nor whether she can have my real mail address and sign me up to their newsletter.

So the hotel has paid around 20% commission to the booking portal to get me as a customer.

If the friendly receptionist had briefly asked me whether I would like to become a member of their customer club, and what benefits I could get during my stay and on future stays, there was a good chance I would have said yes.

And then they would also have had a good chance of saving the 20% commission to the booking portal next time.

And the experience is not unique. I come across it very often, at hotels, restaurants, cinemas, theatres and retail shops alike.

Even though the company has invested in having a customer club or a newsletter, the staff do not ask new guests whether they would like to sign up.

The result is that they have to keep paying expensive commissions and advertising money to get their own customers to come back.

The three typical reasons this happens are:

1. The staff do not feel customers are missing out on anything important if they do not tell them about the customer club or the newsletter.

2. The staff are not measured personally on how many sign-ups they bring in.

3. It is awkward for the member of staff to help the customer sign up, so combined with points 1 and 2, they leave it to the customer to consider it themselves.

If you have those three challenges, you can improve your results markedly even if you only solve the first two points and are still somewhat hampered by awkward systems.

It requires you to train your staff, and to make sure that what customers miss out on by not signing up is something the staff also think is genuinely good. And that you spend time training your people.

And if you are hampered by awkward systems, you are always welcome to get in touch with me. Perhaps we can help make it easier.