How do I ask customers for referrals?

Ask at the moment the customer is most satisfied — usually right after you have visibly solved their problem — and ask for something specific rather than general. "Do you know anyone else whose boiler is on its last legs?" produces referrals. "Keep us in mind" does not.

Timing

The best moment is immediately after the customer has expressed satisfaction — the sentence after "that is exactly what we needed" is the highest-yield moment in the entire relationship.

The worst moment is inside an invoice. Attaching a referral request to a payment demand associates the ask with an obligation the customer is discharging rather than with the value they received.

Be specific

General requests fail because you are asking the customer to search their entire memory against vague criteria. Specific requests give them something to match against, and the match usually surfaces immediately.

Name the situation, not the industry. "Anyone who runs a restaurant" is a category. "Anyone who has just taken on a second site and is finding the bookkeeping is getting away from them" is a memory.

Make acting on it easy

Offer to do the work: draft the introduction, or ask permission to make contact yourself. A customer who has to compose an email on your behalf will intend to and then not.

Always ask before contacting anyone. Passing on someone's details without their knowledge damages the customer's relationship with the person they named, which is the exact trust you were hoping to borrow.

Close the loop back to the customer

Tell the customer what happened to the person they referred. It is the courtesy that makes a second referral likely, and its absence is the most common reason a customer refers once and never again.

Be careful with incentives

Paying customers for referrals changes the character of the recommendation and, in some sectors, its legality. Where you do reward referrals, the person receiving the recommendation generally needs to know it was compensated.

MyReferral.systems is a referral network where local businesses hold a category seat, pass referrals to each other, and track every one from introduction through to closed business.

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