People trust the people they know. 92% of the people trust brand experiences from friends and family more than advertising. If the people they know trust your brand, the tendency of their circle to trust your brand is higher. Besides, 88% of customers trust reviews by other consumers as much as they believe suggestions from the people they know. This is the power of customer referral.
When you are in the education and migration business, customer referral matters even more. Because studying or migrating abroad is a life-changing decision for anyone. Customers seek consultation from a company that can be trustworthy enough to invest their significant time of life along with a lump sum money. However, even when you provide a good service to your clients, it can be challenging at times to get good customer referrals.
If you are trying to improve your customer referrals, try these four tips.
Four tips to improve your customer referrals
1. Exclusive Offers
An exclusive offer can be used as a form of advertising for a business, especially one that doesn’t have much physical presence or is struggling to get students to their agency. Exclusive offers are a great way to incentivize customers to refer their friends and family members.
Exclusive offers can lure the attention of the clients and drive positive experiences among your clients. Some companies may offer exclusive offers through an affiliate program to customers who refer their friends or family members. This tactic is becoming more and more popular as it helps brands generate word-of-mouth marketing by rewarding the customers for referring to their social circle.
Furthermore, you can tie partnerships with universities or agents to provide discounts or offers to your clients. These offers act as a loyalty reward to your clients and an added value to your service.
2. Proactive Customer Service
In the age of social media, customer satisfaction is key. You should provide exceptional customer service so that each customer feels like they’re receiving some kind of personal touch when you are course counselling instead of just a transaction.
The idea of proactive customer service is simple; it involves anticipating the needs of your customers and responding to them in a timely manner. Adopting a method as simple as this increases your customers’ loyalty, which, as a result, can increase your customer referrals. Referrals are a strong indicator of customer satisfaction because the referrer has had some sort of interaction with the company and is recommending them to someone else. A proactive customer service approach should help education and migration agencies provide a better experience for their customers, differentiating themselves from competitors.
3. Giveaways and Competitions
Relationships with clients do not end anywhere. You can keep your audience engaged with your business through social media. Social media is a good platform to maintain a good business-client relationship. However, you also need to invest in each relationship and seek ways to engage with them so that your business will always remain on top of their mind. Giveaways and social media competitions are quite helpful in generating more awareness of your business. They give reasons to talk about your business, in a positive way.
In certain cases, giveaways or competitions can be used as a way for companies to collect customer data without having to spend any money on advertising. Giveaways and Competitions are a great way to incentivize customers to share your promotions with their friends. It’s always better to have a customer refer you than pay for an advertisement. However, it is also important not to make the promotion too difficult. Otherwise, people will give up before they even start.
4. Online or Face-to-Face Events
Another way to keep the talk of your business going on among your clients is the events. Such events can have a meaningful discussion on topics like visa changes, abroad migrating processes, scholarships and more. These discussions interest your clients as they are constantly seeking their queries to be answered. These types of events add the trust factor to your business. It also shows how you understand the needs of your clients.
Online events allow for more flexibility, with the event happening at a time and date that is convenient for the attendees. Because of the global nature of International Education, online events can also be attended by people from across the globe. For those who are on a tight budget or need social distance due to the pandemic, this can be a great option.
Face-to-face events are usually more intimate than online events. This makes them seem more personal and provide attendees with one-on-one time with speakers of interest. This can be an opportunity for education & migration counsellors to directly speak to potential customers to form a connection.
Events are a great place to meet new customers and provide direct customer referrals. They are also a top way to generate leads from potential customers who may not have been aware of your services.
To sum up, a customer referral is possible only when you give a positive experience to your current clients, only when you nurture them with prompt responses, only when you can engage them with what interests them. Customer referral is a powerful tool to determine the success of your business. If you put your efforts into improving customer referrals, you can soar your business high.
For more industry-related tips, stay tuned with us.
