How to Get Repeat Clients: The Customer Experience Strategy That Keeps People Coming Back

Most businesses say they care about customer experience… but very few actually design it in a way that creates repeat clients.

In this episode of The Secret Sauce Podcast, Chad Trease and Lacey Moores break down what truly drives repeat business and why it’s not just about great service or staying in touch.

Using lessons inspired by Ritz-Carlton, they unpack how the best companies build a belief system around client experience that turns everyday interactions into unforgettable moments.

You’ll learn how to:
• Create a customer experience that actually leads to repeat clients
• Turn one transaction into long-term relationships and referrals
• Build a client journey that keeps you top of mind (without being annoying)
• Empower your team to create “wow” moments - even on a small budget
• Systemize your follow-up so it doesn’t fall through the cracks

Whether you’re a loan officer, real estate agent, or business owner, this episode will show you how to stop chasing new clients - and start creating clients who come back again and again.

Because the businesses that win aren’t just the ones who close deals… they’re the ones people never forget.

🎧 Subscribe for more episodes on client experience, marketing, and building a business people talk about.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Everyone talks customer experience. Ritz-Carlton engineered obsession, not with luxury, but by turning belief and repetition into loyalty, even when things go wrong. Let's ask what we can steal for our own small business playbook. And that's what we're talking about this week, Lacey. Ritz-Carlton is an incredibly well-known brand. A lot of people just consider them a luxury brand that that's what they've created is just built only on luxury. As I've been studying, you know, I've gotten pretty obsessed with client experience. Like it's become probably the thing I think about most is how do we level up our customer experience? How do other businesses level up their client journey, I guess, so to speak? It's not just an experience, but it is literally the client's entire journey through when they first think about your business to after they leave. How do you make that a super memorable one and change the way that they feel when they interact with you? Right. So, like that's become my obsession. And so now I'm kind of studying businesses that have made this their obsession as well and try to boil it down to how can we implement things like this or how can other small businesses implement. So at your level. Yeah, at your own level, because you're not gonna be able to do exactly what Ritz Galton does. They got a huge budget, right? But there are parallels and you there are things that you can take away from it. My obsession for a while now has been to create the greatest customer experience in the mortgage industry. We're probably not there quite yet, but I do think it, I mean, we have we have elevated so much in the past couple of years, and I don't rest on my laurels. I'm sitting thinking, how do we one-up it again? How do we do this? And my whole team is it's become truly a belief center for all of them, which is really fun.

Lacey 1:28

This is going to tell you a story there, really quick that I heard about Ritz Carlton, just to kind of set the scene here.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

I think I know. Yeah, I probably know the story.

Lacey 1:35

You probably it's just really good though. So family goes on vacation there, and the family writes back and says, Hey, my child left their favorite stuffed animal there.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

I've experienced that. Not not what Ritz Carlton did, but I've experienced your child child leaving it.

Lacey 1:49

And this is the saddest thing because especially when it's the the one stuffed animal that they take everywhere that's you know, the memories and all of this stuff. But definitely regardless, we don't know that part. They just we just know that they left this stuffed animal. And Ritz Carl, you know, the employee at Ritz Carlton found it. And, you know, they could have just found it and mailed it back, right? And would they have been happy? They would have been really happy. Like this some people won't even do that, right? They won't even do that. But nothing.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Or they even ask for the overnight fee, like, hey, we'll send it, but you gotta pay us. Here's the shipping cost.

Lacey 2:17

Yeah, here's the shipping cost. Yeah. They didn't ask for any of that, they sent it back, but before they did, they take the stuffed animal all around the resort and they take pictures of the stuffed animal having vacation.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

It's own experience, yeah.

Lacey 2:28

At the Ritz-Carleton. Yeah. And I just can't imagine that the little boy or the little girls feeling when they finally not just get their stuffed animal back, but then that they have these pictures that they're looking at of their stuffed animal all around the resort. You know, or whatever. And just this feeling that this child would have. Now, as a parent, the feeling I would have seeing my child experience that like you just can't, you can't touch it. No, no, they didn't have to do it. They didn't have to do it at all. They could have just, I mean, yeah, ship it back, even with cost would have been, they would have probably happily paid that, you know, because you can't re you know, a stuffed animal you can't redo, like, you know, how they're dirty and just whatever, it's theirs. But being able to get it back, they just went way over the top there. Like way over the top.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Yeah. So let's let's talk. I I love that you brought that up because that is a perfect example of who Ritz Carlton is at their core. That's the brand that they've created. Yes. And I I love that, but it is very much by design. Yes.

Lacey 3:25

So explain that to us. Break it down.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

Yeah. So Ritz Carlton, I think most companies think they think about the client experience. So they're like, yeah, we want to have our clients to have a great experience, but they don't actually make changes and design a belief system around it. And what's Rit Ritz Carlton has done is truly designed a belief system because like your actions will follow, your employees' actions will follow if they truly believe it in their core. Right. Right. It's one thing just to say, hey, here's how we treat people. It's another to have this belief that the client experience above all else is the most important thing. How people feel after they interact with your brand is the most important thing. And to have not just the CEO or you know, the C-suite people understand that, but to have every single person within the company understand that and but not just understand it, but believe it. Yeah. Then they wake up every day excited to go act on that mission. Right. And so that's what bred that. Like that wasn't a C-suite decision in that moment to go and do that, but they now had that belief. All the employees within the company had that belief. So whoever received that, they're thinking in that way. Like, oh man, how do we do this? How do we make somebody's day with this? Not just execute on the goal is to get it back to the child and the family. Right. But how do we actually make this an experience?

Lacey 4:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

So that is what Ritz Carleton has done. And there are lots of parallels there. Like, we all don't have Ritz Carlton's budget, but as small business owners, as people in the mortgage industry, whether you're solo loan officer or a team, realtor, same thing, or just an entrepreneur, like take little inspiration from this and then make it your own. And that's my goal with this episode is just let's look at the the key things that make that such an important thing. And how do we how do we make that our own? Right.

Lacey 5:07

Well, didn't you say, go cover this part really quick? Didn't you say that Ritz Carlton has a budget or like a explain that? Could you explain that to me and how any employee can do this?

SPEAKER_00 5:17

So this is another piece of Ritz-Carlton like lore. This is part of their brand identity, is that, and the numbers been thrown out as different numbers, but the most commonly thrown out number is that every employee across every division, and that's from the C-suite all the way down to housekeepers. And I'm not saying they're at the lowest level. I'm just saying like from anybody all the way up. Every single employee that is an employee of Ritz-Carlton has a budget of up to$2,000. If somebody has a bad experience, a negative experience, a complaint, that they have to a$2,000 budget to make it right, not just make it right, but to actually try to wow that customer to a point where they don't only accept an apology for what went wrong, that they become a raving fan because of the way the business handled it. And that is such a key point. That's something our team has looked at. And I've said, okay, how can we make that our own? Because we don't, I'm not giving everybody on the team$2,000 to do that. You can't, right? But you can boil it down and say, okay, what inspiration can we take from that? How do we implement something from that? And so we did. And so, like, this is one example, right? But everybody on our team has$50 pales in comparison to$2000, but it's not about the amount of money. I don't think Ritz Carlton didn't spend$2,000 to do that with that example that you gave with the stuffed animal. Right. It didn't cost anywhere near that. It's the intention behind it, right? So everybody on our team is empowered to at any point in a customer's journey, if they exp if they can tell that the customer is starting to have a negative emotion. And even if it's not something that we cause, quite frankly, a lot of times in this, there's the seller. We just had one the other day that the seller all of a sudden was like, we can't close because the seller doesn't have the money to bring to the table. And it was the morning of closing that the buyer found out and was devastated. First time home buyer, everything had gone great. They were so excited. And in the last minute, the whole experience gets tainted a little bit. Right. And what we've done is like made sure that everybody has the belief system, everybody understands that this is what we want to do. In that moment, everybody's empowered. If you're the one who experiences that, so Kelly, person who experienced that on our team. And so she brought it back to the team and was like, hey, we've got to do something, right? She could have just done it by herself, but she we do like to collaborate on this stuff as a team because it makes us all feel like we were a piece of it as well. So it's really fun. So everybody's empowered to bring back situations like that and figure out, okay, what can we do? Right. So we just sent a little gift basket that would arrive that day. We've got different companies that we use that we know that we can drop ship something. And I mean, this was like a little piece, it was a little assortment of candy. They could pick out their favorite candy. Curated a note to go along with it that was just like, I'm not gonna even do it justice in this moment, right? But very bespoke note based on that situation. It's like, hey, you know, just so you know everything's gonna everything's gonna work out. We're working hard behind the scenes to make sure that you're able to close as quickly as possible. Just know that you can sit back, relax, and rest easy, don't lose any sleep. We got you covered, type of thing, right? And just acknowledging the fact that things got hairy, things got stressful for them, right, you know, and making sure that they feel seen and heard in that moment, and not just glossing over it or yeah, we go to work, but we don't speak to how the customers, what's their emotion in that state, right? And their emotion has to be anxiety and stress and nervousness, all of it and sadness, like I mean, all of it, right? So just making sure that everybody has that. So everybody on our team has a budget of up to 50 bucks, and they what we do is make sure that we know some things that are very specific to our clients. So we have them fill out a little, and it's not just a survey that's like, hey, tell us what your favorite whatever is. We word it in a way that makes people want to fill this out. But it's a when they after they do the application before they meet with us in person, we have a little online questionnaire and it's only like eight questions. Sure. But one of them is, you know, what when things get frustrating or when things get heavy, what is your go-to pick me up? And we get a good lot of good insight from that. And so we understand some people like will binge on candy or sweets. Some people will have a drink, right? And whatever that is, we try to cater that specific gift or whatever we're doing for them around who they are, not just what we think is a good idea, but what the information we've gathered tells us would be a bespoke one size fits one shift in that moment.

Lacey 9:18

Yeah. Well, one thing that you said too that I want to go back, and it's kind of a pros tip, but you said in that instance, Kelly came back and brought it up to the team and you said, you know, she could do it on her own and you do empower your team to make those decisions if needed. However, you also like when you all do that because you're everybody collaborates. But the pro tip is you in the beginning, the collaboration piece is so important because what that does is it keeps it front and center of everybody's thought process, right? Like when you're trying to start something like this and you want your whole team to be sure they're thinking about it all the time, when somebody brings back a win, it makes people, oh yeah, I need to be looking, you know, just brings it back to the forefront of their thought process. So I love the collaboration piece, even though I know Kelly feels totally empowered to be able to make those decisions and would do a great job at it. But it gives everybody else the opportunity to not just give input, but to keep remembering that this is what our team is focused on because we want this experience.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Yeah. I mean, I think that yeah, the great takeaway there is that, you know, a company like Ritz Carlton, somebody a company wanting to embrace this, they don't just train on the identity that they they train or they train on identity, not just behavior, right? So the behavior is one thing, but like in your soul, identify with this is how we treat people, this is what we do. And so that's what brings everybody back to that common goal all the time. And then some other things that make Ritz Carlton unique before we wrap up, another one is just they have traditions around or they do a daily lineup where everybody's talking about it. Everybody has a credo card in that they keep on them at all times when their exact beliefs, their mission around the client experience, they can pull that out, like they know it by heart, right? And they keep that on them. So that's a really great. I've personally not done that with our team. They do like they understand it, but I think that's a great takeaway. Like it's something when I was studying Ritz Carlton, is like, man, we should just do that is make sure everybody has on their computer, taped to their monitor, just what are true, like written out, what and we all come up with them as a team. What are our core beliefs about that client experience? And then they create consistency around, so they do a daily lineup or they talk about it and they celebrate wins. We do it once a week, but every Thursday we have a call and we're talking about like, here's the magic that we made for some people in the last week. Here's something that came up that we know about somebody that we could create a magic moment for these people. And so there is tradition around it and there's systems. And we so I think the key takeaway there is like it's one thing to think about it, it's another to operationalize it and systematize it in a way that still feels very authentic, authentic, and organic. And so you have to as soon if you don't create systems and operationalize it, and I've experienced this, you have the best of intentions, but you get busy, you're just not all together at the same time doing it, and things fall through that you wish you could have pulled off. So you have to systematize it and operationalize it, and it can still be very powerful and organic and authentic.

Lacey 12:04

So let's talk about just real quick how does somebody on a small team or a one-person team systemize something like that, right? In a busy, busy time. Like, what's a tactic that they could do to make sure that they're delivering on those things that they thought about, their intentions were, yeah, but they couldn't do it. They don't have anybody to call or to dump it off to. Like, how what could they do?

SPEAKER_00 12:25

First and foremost, create your belief system around your client experience and own it, right? And it doesn't need to be across the team. If it's just you, put it at home, put it in your mirror, put it on your laptop, like have it everywhere that you are just constantly reminded of your exact belief system around how important that client experience is and make it your own. So that's the first thing. Two is you have to make time for it. So you have to be intentional about making time for this stuff because this is not something that you can just fill in the gap. So when I have some time, I will do this. That that example of the stuffed animal, that person did not have time in their day to pull that off if they didn't know, hey, on Wednesdays, I have time to make someone's day, right? So you have to create space to be able to do it because we're as entrepreneurs, we're busy and we get distracted all of the time. So you have to create and etch out time in your calendar that is specific to this that you can and then write things down as you go as like, hey, I want to do this, I want to do that. Don't do it in that moment because distractions are gonna kill you, right? So keep on task of whatever you're doing, but have time two times a week, three times a week that you are executing on this every single week.

Lacey 13:32

Yep. Mines are Friday, so I call my Friday working on my business, not in my business. Right. And so I would time block out a little time for this experience. If it was just me, I'd do that. And then when you're saying all that, I would probably have some sort of a note system or somewhere. Yes. That the second it happens, I go there and I say, Hey, do this for Johnny and send this to so and so and just leave it there. So I'm not doing it at the moment. But then when that time slot comes up on Friday, I know to go to that note list, pull it out, execute.

SPEAKER_00 14:02

Yep. If you want to make it even simpler, if you're creating a calendar invite for that space, an event on your calendar, like an hour on a Friday, literally go into the body of that put in the notes and just type that in and just have a running list, right? And then make sure that you are executing on, you know, you don't have to execute on every single one. And I think that's another piece of it before we close, is that you will start to feel like a failure if every single time you think of, oh, this could be cool, that could be cool, and then you create a note about it. You got to give yourself some grace with this too. The power in it is this becoming a philosophy and you executing on a regular basis. You will fail if you say, we are going to knock this out of the park for every single customer that we come in contact with. That's where we failed. Is I started thinking we need to have, everybody needs to have a magic moment created. And some people are just you can't work it into their park. It's forced to be. It is forced. If you create the headspace for it, you'll find the opportunities that are natural. And that's where the beauty is. Find those natural opportunities and then knock it out of the park. Beautiful. Well, I love it. Yeah, let's leave it there. If this resonated with you, please share it with somebody else. Going forward, we definitely want to do more episodes like this on things that are super passionate to us that we can take some examples from other people and relay back to you all on how you can integrate that into your business. So we look forward to doing that. Thanks so much for being with us. We'll see you next time.