Communications to Get, Keep, and Satisfy Customers 7 Communications to Get, Keep, and Satisfy Customers It's true: The more contact you have with customers, the more likely they are to place their next order with you instead of with your competitor. The reason for this is that customers are bombarded with messages from vendors looking for an order. The more recent your last communication, the more likely they are to think of you first when a need arises. Therefore, frequent contact with your customers, whether it be by phone, mail, e-mail, or in person, contributes to your bottom line. This chapter gives you model correspondence you can use to boost the quality and frequency of customer communication. The samples cover a wide range of situations--from announcing a product upgrade to getting buyers to renew a subscription, policy, or service agreement. We have provided sample correspondence in this chapter largely in the form of printed letters or memos because formal letters impart a sense of conscien- tiousness about your relationship with your customer. However, for nearly all of the correspondence described in this chapter, e-mail is an appropriate me- dium. Just adapt the actual message portion of the sample letters or memos you see in this chapter to the format and structure of e-mail. (Whenever the sample we provided needed very detailed tweaking to work with e-mail, or when e-mail was the primary recommended way to send a particular message, we've provided a specific e-mail sample for your reference.) As always, be on the look- out for the icon, indicating correspondence for which e-mail is not suitable. 133