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Get Quick Hoops today at shop.moderngrower.co and protect your crops for years to come. How have these changes affected your retention rate with customers?You mentioned the first year it was 40 to 50% attrition.Where are you at now?
Well, our survey that we just sent out last week, 90% of customers say they're going to renew, which is amazing.Time will tell.
Again, if that's true, a lot of it, it's very easy to say you're going to renew, but given the positive relationships we've had with people over the year, the glowing reviews we got in that survey, even though they were anonymous, nobody had their name attached.
So it's not like I know, Oh, Jill really likes our customer service.Yay.Go Jill. It's anonymous so that we know that the feedback is really honest.
And I think if we just follow up with people over the winter and send out a good campaign over four or five weeks, we'll probably be able to get at least 80% retention.And I'm hoping to get the full 90.
We had a question in our survey that was about if you're on the fence, it was something like this. on the fence, what's one thing that we could do to win you back?
That was probably the best question that we asked our survey because we got a shopping list of things that we could do to improve our service.It wasn't an open-ended, what could we do to make our farm better?
What could we do to make you happier with our farm?It's what would actually convince you to come back next year if you're not totally certain right now?
Knowing those responses, was there a theme to them?We're on the fence.What can we do to move you off the fence?
One big one is actually going to be a relief off of our backs and it was email communication.A few customers said that they just found the amount of email communication was overwhelming.We were over communicating.
We were putting little details in the bodies of emails that people didn't really need to know.
So even though I roughly tried to do this this year, next season we're going to make sure that all of the primary information is at the top of the email, the secondary information is in the middle, and then we'll have a farm news section at the bottom, like a little blog.
I tried to do that this year, but I didn't do it very well.And I think what was missing is that I didn't quantify it.You don't manage what you don't measure.
So instead of just having roughly top primary, middle secondary, third farm news, I'm going to have, if you can't read the primary information in 30 to 60 seconds, it's too long.
And if there is information that I could cut out, that people could pick up the vegetables with out being frustrated at something, then it's secondary information.And anything that has to do with how the week went, that belongs in news.
And in total, if the email cannot be read in five minutes or less, it's too long and something has to be cut out.
And if there's like different stuff about, you know, we're moving our position at the market, it's October and we're not going to be able to stay outside anymore.
So we're moving our Saturday pickup time to evenings after the market so we can be inside rather than during the market outside in the day.
Those are going to be sent as separate standalone messages so that people don't get these text walls in their email inbox.
So that's a logistical thing that a lot of people said was a pain because you know, a lot of our customers, even though we try to, make it open to all income levels.The average customer is in the middle to upper income bracket.
So these people are high performing professionals.They've got very busy lives.And even if they're not, they have kids, they have their own social lives.They don't have time to be spending 10 or 15 minutes a week.
I know that doesn't sound like a lot of time, but if it's dense logistical information and the formatting of the email is different every year or every week, that's going to annoy them.And I guess,
I thought by over communicating, I was doing them a service.But if you think of that through a lean farm style, it's overburdening myself because I'm taking an hour, an hour and a half away, writing an email every week to my customers.
And then it's like over packaging a bag of kale.If you put three bags of kale, yeah, it might stay fresh a little longer in the fridge, but that customer is going to value those extra two bags.
They just want the minimum amount that they need in order to get what they want. So if I can give them that in 30 to 60 seconds, that's all I need to do.And I could write that email in 10 minutes and then template the other information below.
I can do a quick scan to see if anything needs to be changed from week to week.But as far as the service for our customers, it's not important to it.It can go.
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