23. The 4 Seasons of the Customer Journey: Winter

EPISODE 23 OF WHAT WOULD THEY DO? THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PODCAST FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS

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In the final episode of the Four Seasons of the Customer Journey mini-series, we explore the most overlooked and most powerful phase of the customer journey: Winter, the season of loyalty and long-term retention.

This episode is a must-listen for service providers, course creators, and membership owners who want to go beyond making the sale and build lasting customer relationships that result in repeat business, referrals, and a thriving community.

Let’s break down what to do after the purchase is made, how to deliver meaningful moments that feel like a warm hug, and the specific retention strategies I’m using inside Retention Lab to wow my customers long after checkout.

What we cover:

Why “Always Available” Can Become “Never Accessed” – How resource overload and busy lives like to get in the way.

Why Winter Is the Most Strategic Season in the Customer Journey – It’s not the end of the sale, it’s the beginning of brand loyalty.

What Customers Are Looking for After They Buy – Signals that they made the right decision, next steps, and ongoing support.

Why Loyalty Must Be Earned (and Re-Earned) – The first purchase is not the finish line. It’s the first step in a long-term relationship.

Retention Tactics for Service Providers, Course Creators & Membership Hosts – Practical strategies tailored to your business model.

How I Use Email, Milestones, and Surprise Rewards in my Membership – Including a clever engagement system and referral program.

Soundbites:

“That first purchase doesn’t equal loyalty. You need to earn the loyalty with every brand touch point, every interaction after that sale. It’s an ongoing experience, an ongoing creation process that needs to be strategic and really pay attention to the signals that they’re sending you on a regular basis.”

“It’s not about surprise and delight all the time. Your moments that matter and your brand touch points need to be intentional. They need to be supportive and they need to have the human touch and infuse you into everything that you do.”

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Your next steps:

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Catch up with other episodes in this mini series:

Episode Transcript:

Nadine Nethery (00:00)

Hey, hey, I am super excited to welcome you to the final episode in this mini series, all about the four seasons of the customer journey. If you’ve missed spring, summer and autumn, make sure you listen to the previous three episodes. They are all bite sized and it’s such a nice holistic look at your customer journey.

We’ve already walked through spring, which is the season of discovery. We’ve covered summer, which is all about engagement, affinity, trust building. And then last week we explored autumn where it’s all about helping your dream customer to decide whether it’s a yes or a no. And today we’re going to wrap things up by looking at possibly the most important

season of your customer journey, winter, because winter is all about loyalty. Winter might seem like the quietest time, the lowest impact time, but it is the most powerful season in your business if you go about it strategically.

Because while everyone else is really obsessed with making that first sale, the magic and the long-term opportunities for your business growth really are in the long-term impact of having this person stay with you and stay on that journey with you. In winter, it’s all about building and growing an ecosystem that’s built on trust, on customer retention and long-term revenue.

Winter begins the moment the payment goes through. So as soon as someone has made that decision to hopefully give you the thumbs up and work with you, whether it’s in a one-on-one capacity inside your group program or inside your membership, and that means your job is not done. After the decision is when your your biggest effort starts. Your client

in the winter season is looking for signs and signals that they have made the right decision. They’re looking for reassurance and continuous mini wins and mini moments that matter that remind them, yes, this was so the right decision. They’re wondering,

what happens next. So towards the end of your course, or your one-on-one client projects, they’re starting to think, what’s the next logical step? How can I keep working with Nadine? How can Nadine keep supporting me beyond this project or beyond this course? And they are starting to implement what they’ve learned. They are showing up and they’re really immersed in everything you have to say, because obviously you’re top of mind.

But they still need your support. And they want your support because handing over your cash shouldn’t be the finish line for your relationship. And it’s really the winter season where they decide whether they want to stick around, whether they want to work with you again, whether they even feel like referring you to their network or recommend you to their connections. So loyalty as such

is where it’s at in the winter season. And the big mindset shift here is that that first purchase doesn’t equal loyalty. You need to earn the loyalty with every brand touch point, every interaction after that sale. So it’s an ongoing experience, an ongoing creation process that needs to be strategic and pay attention to the signals that they’re sending you on a regular basis.

In the online business space, it seems all about, making that sale, converting people quickly, growing your email list. It’s all about the firsts, right? Just getting their cash and then moving on. But retention and keeping people who’ve already bought from you is much more efficient for you long-term, much more consistent, much more reliable. It’s much cheaper as well.

and way more profitable because you have to work much less to convert those first time customers again, because they already trust you. And if you go about it strategically, they just need a little gentle nudge to take that next step. Knowing how to wow and how to impress your first time customers means you’re increasing your customer lifetime value. You are reducing your membership churn. So how many people cancel your

membership because they just want to be part of it and they keep seeing wins. It really impacts your word of mouth. So happy customers obviously are telling their friends and their community about you and then generate new leads and new income for you. And it turns buyers into long-term brand advocates. So people who do the work spreading for you, but also

can’t wait for you to release new things and work with you again. It’s not about surprise and delight all the time. Your moments that matter and your brand touch points need to be intentional. They need to be supportive and they need to have the human touch and really infuse you into everything that you do.

Quick tips for the winter season for service providers. If you offer one-on-one services, I would totally, not ghost your customer after you’ve delivered the website design, the copy, the branding. Make sure you automate ideally on the backend to check in with people at a certain milestone point after delivering the deliverables, right? You want to check in how it’s serving

them. what’s working for you? What isn’t working for you? So that gives you an opportunity to fix what might not be quite in alignment with what they were expecting. And is there anything I can help you with beyond this project? It opens up the conversation for potential next project. It sparks an idea and just plants a seed that

there are always next steps and more opportunities. I always ask clients in my off-boarding survey whether they would like to find out about my referral partner program. Clients usually say yes. And then I formalize that with a referral partner program where

I encourage them to share me with their business network and the ins and outs of how I do that I have shared with my retention lab members. It’s one of the formulas inside the lab. So if you are looking at launching a referral partner program for your service based business, check it out. You can join us anytime. If you are a course creator,

you can have a graduation email. You can even come up with a, graduation certificate. You can help them recap their journey. You can offer next steps, whether it’s renewing at a discounted price for another six weeks, for example, or whether there’s a follow on membership to support people with what they’ve just learned.

So next steps are always really advisable. It could also be inviting them to your affiliate program so they can share their wins with others while being rewarded for it and obviously spreading the word for you. And what that does is it just reinforces that while yes, the course is complete, I’m still with you. I still want to walk on this journey with you and I’m here if you need more support.

The same can happen for self-guided courses while obviously recapping the journey and graduation certificate. All those things are a bit harder. You can invite feedback, for example, you can estimate how long it should take. You could also normalize that, we all have the stash of unfinished courses. You can send them little nudges to encourage them to take action and show them what’s on the other end of that action. And then ultimately again, invite them to that next step.

If you’re membership site owner, it is totally a good idea to build in a lightweight progress tracking. That could be via monthly milestone check-ins where they submit every month, what they’ve achieved, the goals they’re setting for next month, or even a quick, question like what has changed for you this month? What have you learned? What takeaway was there that nudged you a

step closer to fixing the problem you identified in spring. You could celebrate wins for example inside the community or privately if you prefer. You could remind them of the things that they haven’t explored yet. There are so many options here to keep people on track and really keep them engaged in your membership because winter doesn’t have to be

a fizzle. Winter can be the beginning of something beautiful and a long-term relationship. Something that I do inside Retention Lab is a coffee card style engagement system like Starbucks cards, you buy your 10th coffee and then you get the 11th free. So I’ve applied this system to engagement. Via clever connections between my email system and…

all the places, I can actually track how actively engaged people are in my community. And that means I can reward them once they reach a certain coffee cart milestone, once they’ve collected a certain number of points. And again, that hopefully keeps them on track, keeps them motivated and also rewards them with surprises they didn’t know were around the corner. And this strategy is something I’m going to drop into Retention Lab on the 1st of August. It’s a brand new formula that’s coming to members.

If you are curious and want to get your hands on it, you are very welcome to join us.

check out Retention Lab via the link in the show notes if you are curious. And there’s so many more strategies just like this one waiting in sight. To sum things up for today, winter is all about retention. It’s the beginning of your long-term relationship with your customers and your students. And it’s all about

serving your customer, it’s about celebrating, it is about ongoing connections and it’s about building something special, something lasting that survives this season and turns it into an ongoing bigger journey with you. So today I would love you to choose one after-sale touch point, so something they experience once they have handed over

their cash once they have made their purchase decision and see how you can turn that into something that feels like a warm hug or something unexpected, something that excites them to take action and something that excites them to take that next step and make that next purchase with you. So if you are listening, if you’ve tuned into the last four episodes and think how

beautiful it would be to create the four seasons in your business to take your customer on a journey, a holistic experience with your brand. Then you are very welcome to join us inside Retention Lab. That’s what we do there.

We are going to implement a holistic feel good retention system in the members businesses together. So every month I implement something in my business that makes my customer experience and customer journey work like a treat and so do my members. Check it out, the link is in the show notes. The next

implementation cycle kicks off on the 1st of August and now’s the time to jump on board and get your hands on some of those formulas that I’ve mentioned over the last four weeks. If you have enjoyed this series, make sure you subscribe and follow and also share it with your community because every business owner

can totally do with a strategic look at their customer journey. It’s something that we often forget because we’re so wrapped up in landing that sale, but it’s a totally transformational process that can benefit any online business owner, whether you’re a service provider, course creator or membership site owner. I hope you enjoyed this little mini-series. If you did, drop me a DM on Instagram or send me an email, let me know.

because I have many more ideas where this little mini-series came from. Thanks for tuning in and I will see you next week where we’re back to normal programming with a case study and guest experts all about AI bots inside group programs and how you can walk the fine line between losing the human factor and actually providing more

convenience to your students. Very interesting episode and I can’t wait to share it with you.