Keep clients coming back · Every business
A Year of Check-Ins: The Calendar That Brings Customers Back
Customer appreciation works when it is useful to the customer and arrives on a schedule the business can keep, and field research shows a generic thank-you does far less than owners expect while a timely reminder or a real question does more.
At a glance
- A check-in calendar is a planned set of six to eight touches a year, each tied to a moment in the customer's own cycle, such as a season, a due date or the anniversary of a first visit, and each giving the customer something useful.
- In a field experiment with 500,000 new donors, published in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, fundraising professionals predicted thank-you calls would raise retention by 80 percent; the calls had no measurable effect.
- Useful touches did better in other studies; simple weekly reminders substantially raised gym attendance, and customers who were asked about their satisfaction in a financial services field experiment bought more and were more profitable a year later.
- For an illustrative business with 400 customers, a calendar that adds one visit a year for every four customers brings in about $2,700 a year after its costs.
Part 1 | Gratitude alone rarely changes behavior
Owners who want customers to feel appreciated usually reach first for thanks: We should call every new customer to say thank you. The impulse is a good one, and research on gratitude supports the warmth behind it; in three experiments published in Psychological Science, people who wrote gratitude letters underestimated how positive the recipients would feel and overestimated how awkward the recipients would find it.
Feeling appreciated and coming back are different outcomes, though, and the largest test of the thank-you habit found no link between them. Researchers worked with public television stations and a national nonprofit to randomly assign 500,000 new donors to receive a thank-you call or no call. Fundraising professionals forecast an 80 percent rise in donor retention; the calls, which followed standard industry practice, produced a precisely estimated null effect.
Thanking customers still costs little and feels good on both ends, so it belongs on the calendar; it simply cannot carry the work of bringing people back, which falls to touches planned around what each customer needs next.
Part 2 | The touches that move customers are useful and well timed
Reminders are the clearest example. A Cochrane review of eight trials with 6,615 participants found attendance of 67.8% with no reminder and 78.6% with a text reminder, and a field experiment at a gym, published in Management Science, found that simple weekly reminders led members to substantially increase their attendance over an extended period, with a response that came within hours of each message.
Asking a question is the second kind of touch that works. In a field experiment in a financial services setting, published in the Journal of Consumer Research, customers who were simply asked to rate their satisfaction changed their behavior afterward, defecting less, using more of the firm's products and becoming more profitable, with effects that grew for months and lasted a year. A short check-in that asks how is the color holding? or is the new system keeping the upstairs cool? works in the same way, because it reminds the customer the business is paying attention and invites a reply the owner can act on.
Part 3 | A calendar the front desk can keep
The calendar below gives a business one touch roughly every six to eight weeks, each with a purpose, and the front desk can set most of them up once in an email or booking tool. The months shift by trade, so a landscaper's spring note lands in March and a tax office's in January.
| When | Touch | What makes it useful |
|---|---|---|
| January | Year-ahead note | The customer's next due date and two open times |
| March | Season change | What to do for hair, skin, home or car as the weather turns |
| A week after any visit | Aftercare check-in | One question about how the result is holding up |
| Anniversary of the first visit | Personal note | What was done, what is due next, signed by the person who served them |
| June | Mid-year question | Two-question survey: what went well, what could be better |
| September | Booking window | Fall and holiday openings before they fill |
| November | Thank-you, with something useful | A care tip, a gift-with-visit or early access to December times |
| When a customer goes quiet | Win-back sequence | Three short notes, then stop |
The cost of running it is mostly time, and the arithmetic is simple enough to test against your own customer list.
| Customers on the list (Assumption) | 400 |
|---|---|
| Extra visits a year per customer (Assumption) | 0.25 |
| Extra visits a year (Calculated (400 × 0.25)) | 100 |
| Average visit (Assumption) | $80 |
| Extra revenue (Calculated (100 × $80)) | $8,000 |
| Margin on extra visits (Assumption) | 50% |
| Extra margin (Calculated ($8,000 × 50%)) | $4,000 |
| Email and text tool (Assumption) | $300 a year |
| Staff time, 2 hours a month at $40 (Calculated (2 × 12 × $40)) | $960 a year |
| Net gain a year (Calculated ($4,000 − $300 − $960)) | $2,740 |
Illustrative example; replace every assumption with your own numbers.
The figure leaves out the customers the calendar keeps from drifting away entirely, which is where most of the value sits; a summary of Bain & Company research in Harvard Business Review puts the cost of winning a new customer at five to 25 times the cost of keeping one.
How you compare
- Reminders: if your business sends no appointment or due-date reminders, the Cochrane figure, about two in three attending without one, is a fair picture of where you start.
- Thank-you touches: if most of your planned contact with past customers is thanks or holiday greetings, the donor experiment suggests those touches are pleasant but unlikely to bring anyone back on their own.
- Your own baseline: count the planned touches a typical customer received from you last year. Many owner-run businesses send one or two, often a holiday card and a sale.
Questions to ask this week
What does each customer need from us next? A due date, a seasonal step or an aftercare tip is a reason to write that the customer will welcome.
Which touch would we most regret skipping? For most businesses it is the reminder of the next due visit.
Who writes, and when? Give the calendar an owner and a fixed hour each month.
What question would we like answered? One question in June, read and answered, can tell an owner more than a year of silence.
Pick three touches from the calendar, schedule them for the next six months in your email or booking tool and count the bookings that come within a week of each.
About this research: This article draws on a field experiment with 500,000 new donors in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, gratitude experiments in Psychological Science, a Cochrane review of reminder messages, a gym reminder field experiment in Management Science, a financial services field experiment in the Journal of Consumer Research and a Harvard Business Review summary of Bain & Company retention research. The worked example is illustrative.
Sources
- Samek, A. and Longfield, C. Do Thank-You Calls Increase Charitable Giving? Expert Forecasts and Field Experimental Evidence. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 15(2), 2023. 500,000 new donors.
- Kumar, A. and Epley, N. Undervaluing Gratitude: Expressers Misunderstand the Consequences of Showing Appreciation. Psychological Science 29(9), 2018. Three experiments.
- Gurol-Urganci, I., de Jongh, T., Vodopivec-Jamsek, V., Atun, R. and Car, J. Mobile phone messaging reminders for attendance at healthcare appointments. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2013. Eight trials, 6,615 participants.
- Calzolari, G. and Nardotto, M. Effective Reminders. Management Science 63(9), 2017.
- Dholakia, U. M. and Morwitz, V. G. The Scope and Persistence of Mere-Measurement Effects: Evidence from a Field Study of Customer Satisfaction Measurement. Journal of Consumer Research 29(2), 2002.
- Gallo, A. The Value of Keeping the Right Customers. Harvard Business Review, 2014.
Related reading: Small Touches That Make Customers Come Back: A Checklist by Business Type · The Peak-End Rule for Service Businesses: Design the Best Moment and the Last One · Email List or Social Followers: Which One Brings Customers Back? · The Win-Back Message for Customers Who Stopped Coming
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