One person tells another, who tells another, who tells another and so on. You get the idea. Let’s see how to make that an actuality.

You have a great company and you provide the highest level of customer service. But as the old cliché says: "A happy customer tells a friend, an unhappy customer tells 10 friends." You don’t have to worry about the unhappy customer telling 10 friends because you always do a great job and keep your customers happy. But how do you increase the number of friends that your happy customers are sending your way?

Plain and simple: You are going to have to reward them.

The reason that happy customers don’t tell many other people about your service is because most customers EXPECT good customer service so the companies that provide it aren’t at the front of their mind. They have too many other things to worry about on a daily basis.

By starting a Customer Referral Program you will give your best customers a reason to want to tell other people about you. Offering discounts or special incentives to customers who refer another person or company to your business is a win-win situation.

You may have medical licensing boards or other ethics committees for your profession that restrict you from certain types of rewards and rightly so due to conflicts of interest that may arise. But you can always find something that you can do to reward your customers when they refer someone to you.

Here is an example of a Customer Referral Program for a Direct Mail Company and how it works:

“When you refer someone, and that person places an order, you will receive a $25 credit that can be used toward any of said company’s services.

Each time this happens you will receive the $25 credit and there is no limit, so feel free to go crazy referring your friends to us. If you refer enough people who become customers you could end up getting your next order FREE.”

When you set up your own referral program you will want to do two things:

First, make sure that the incentive you offer to your customers is in proportion to the price of what you are selling. If your least expensive service is $5000, then a $25 discount is probably not going to be enough to get them interested in spreading the word.

And secondly, you need to promote it. Make sure that your customers know
about the new reward program by:

1) Having your sales associates mention it whenever someone places an order.

2) Posting notices in your business if you have customer foot traffic.

and

3) Sending out announcements to your customer address list on a regular basis.

All of these things will help you to increase the number of customers that you receive through word of mouth, and at the same time help keep down your marketing costs. Is this a great idea or what?

Offering discounts or special incentives to customers who refer another person or company to your business is a win-win situation.

Reward the customers that reward you. One of the greatest compliments is when someone refers another or others to your business.