Everyone must do laundry sooner or later, whether they enjoy it or not. Because it’s a task that people must do frequently, it’s imperative that your laundromat successfully entices customers to return. One person could visit your establishment many times during an accounting cycle, which means there’s potentially a lot of profit riding on a good first impression. Grow customer retention in your laundry business by following these simple tricks.

Experience Is Everything

While some customers are motivated by other factors like distance and accessibility (more on that later), most choose the laundromat at which they have the best experience. Simple things like cleanliness, ample seating, and easy-to-use machines can become the ultimate deciding factor that helps a customer choose your establishment over your competitor’s.

Consider Transportation Needs

Do some research to figure out how your customers are getting to your laundromat. If they’re driving, make sure to have plenty of parking—otherwise, it won’t matter how many machines you have inside. If they walk or take public transportation, ensure that the path to your business is well-marked and easy to traverse.

Create a Good First Impression

Research has shown that customers form most of their impressions based on the first time they use a business or service. Even if their second or third encounter is different, that first time will dominate the decision-making process. You can create an excellent first impression by doing the following:

Spruce Up the Entrance

The entrance to your laundromat is the first thing that customers will see when they arrive. Make it eye-catching with a fresh coat of paint, bold signage, and decorative landscaping. Showing you care about the facility helps customers feel safe and comfortable.

Ensure the Building Is Clean

No one wants to do laundry in a dirty environment. You can avoid a negative impression based on cleanliness by providing waste bins and hiring an attendant during peak hours.

Decorate the Interior

As with the exterior of your laundromat, decorating the inside tells customers that you care about the facility, making them more likely to trust you with their business.

Have Plenty of Seating

Doing laundry is boring—there’s no other way to describe it. It also takes a long time for machines to wash clothes, meaning customers are likely to spend at least a couple of hours at a time in your establishment. Giving them a place to sit while they wait is critical to growing customer retention in your laundry business.

Post Instructions

To keep customers coming back, you want the onboarding process for new customers to be as simple as possible. One way to do that is to post clear instructions in several locations.

Have Visible Security

If your laundromat is open 24-hours, it’s critical that customers feel safe spending time there after dark. While security cameras and safety mirrors help protect your business, visible security devices also help people feel comfortable at night. Better security leads to greater trust in your business.

Anticipate Customer Needs

When your laundromat doesn’t meet a customer’s expectations, they’re more likely to try a competitor next time. To avoid this, try to anticipate what your customers want from your establishment and meet those expectations from day one.

Make Everything Easy

At a laundromat, the most important aspect of your business is utility. If customers can’t efficiently use your facility, they will look elsewhere. You can make it faster and simpler to do laundry by installing the ShinePay laundromat payment app system that works in tandem with traditional coin and cash payments.

Go the Extra Mile

By enhancing your services, you show your customers that you care about whether they have a good experience or not. Adding a kids’ corner or a magazine rack tells customers that you understand their needs, which builds trust with your brand.

Make a Study Area

If your laundromat is near a college or university, you probably have a lot of students as customers. Cater to them by offering a quiet place to study while they wait.

Add a Kids’ Corner

Many parents have to bring children along when they do laundry, so why not include a place to entertain themselves? Doing so tells parents that you care about them, and it keeps kids from playing with equipment you’d rather they leave alone.

Provide Things To Read or Watch

While many customers are likely to bring their own entertainment, having a TV or magazine rack helps people pass the time. If you can’t afford to give up space for a kids’ corner, providing entertainment also helps keep kids from playing with your machines.

Include Space for Folding Clothes

It’s tempting to provide as many machines as possible in a laundromat but leaving space for people to fold clothes goes a long way toward exceeding customer expectations.

Offer Places To Set Baskets

Like folding space, customers need somewhere to set their baskets. If your laundromat’s floor is dirty, customers may put their baskets on chairs, resulting in less available seating.

Provide Vending Machines

When people spend more than an hour in one place, they’re very likely to want a drink or snack. Since doing laundry can take several hours, vending machines are a hassle-free way to meet customer needs and make a little extra revenue.

Get Access To Customer Feedback

If you’re not tuned into customer feedback, you’re missing out on a wealth of valuable information that could save you time and money. Is the attendant you hired not friendly or knowledgeable? Are instructions for the machines too hard to find? You can’t improve your business if you don’t know what is causing customers to have a poor experience.

Provide Clear Communication

There are bound to be occasional problems with any business. When problems happen, it’s critical that you communicate with your customers. Personalizing messages, maintaining a friendly and helpful tone, and being clear about your laundromat’s services keep customers loyal even when they have a less-than-ideal experience.

Reward Loyal Customers

One of the best ways to ensure customers return to your business is to reward them for their loyalty. Loyalty programs for a laundromat could mean offering points to spend on free washes after so many paid cycles or offering perks to customers who get their friends and family members to use your facility.

Improving Accessibility

To ensure as many customers as possible visit your laundromat, it’s vital that you make things accessible. Offering surfaces for baskets and folding helps to keep aisles clear for wheelchair-users, people using mobility aids, and the sight-impaired.

Retaining customers should never be a mystery. Use these tips and ShinePay’s app-based laundromat payment system to make your facilities friendlier and easier to use.