Retention & reminders
The customers you already have are the cheapest ones you’ll ever get.
Service intervals, certificate expiries, annual checks. If it comes round every year, it should book itself — and most trades let it walk.
Work that comes back on a date is the only predictable income a trade has
Nearly every trade has some work that recurs — a service interval, a certificate expiry, an annual check, a seasonal round. It is the best income in the business: no acquisition cost, a customer who already trusts you, and a date that arrives whether the market is busy or not.
Almost all of it leaks. Not because customers are disloyal but because nothing is tracking the date, and a customer with no prompt does not remember an annual check twelve months later. The work does not go to a competitor so much as it simply does not happen, until something breaks and it becomes somebody’s emergency.
The businesses that fix this stop having a quiet January. That is the real prize — not a percentage improvement in retention, but a floor under the year.
What we actually do
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Find every date already in your business.
Installations, certificates, services, warranties. Most trades are sitting on hundreds and tracking none.
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Track them somewhere that will not be forgotten.
A spreadsheet works right up until it is three months out of date and a renewal is missed.
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Prompt before the date, not after.
Early enough to book, late enough to be relevant, and repeated once if nothing happens.
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Say something true in the prompt.
What was installed, when, and why the check is sensible. Fear sells worse than plain explanation and does not survive scrutiny.
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Flag the accounts going quiet.
A commercial customer thinning out is the most expensive thing that can happen without anybody noticing.
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Measure rebooking as a number.
Split domestic and commercial, because they behave completely differently.
Some trades have a built-in clock, and some have to be given one
A gas engineer has a legal annual date and mainly needs it never to be missed. A domestic electrician has almost no natural cycle and has to be given one honestly. A window cleaner’s entire business is the round, and the churn rate is the business model.
The trade pages below deal with all sixteen trades separately, including the ones where the cycle has to be created rather than tracked.
The first ninety days
- Weeks 1–4
Every date loaded from real job records, starting with the ones with a legal deadline attached.
- Weeks 5–8
Prompts written and running, with the commercial and domestic tracks separated.
- Weeks 9–12
Lapse alerts live and rebooking reported, so the base becomes visible for the first time.
What good looks like
- No certificate expires without a prompt going out first
- Every installation has a date attached to it
- Prompts explain rather than alarm
- An account going quiet is noticed in weeks
- A measurable share of each quarter comes from the existing base
Questions we get asked
What if my records are only invoices? That is usually enough to start. Invoices carry the date, the address and what was done, which is most of what a reminder needs.
Will customers find it pushy? Not when it is a real date about their own property. The complaints come from generic marketing, not from a due reminder.
Does it work without a legal deadline? Yes, but the reason has to be honest — an ageing installation is worth checking, and that argument converts on its own.
What does it change first? Usually the quiet months, because that is where the missed dates were sitting.
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