The short answer
Repeat customer rate is the share of your customers who visited more than once in a period. Count customers with two or more visits, divide by everyone who visited, and multiply by 100. Track it month by month: the direction it moves matters more than any single number.
Key takeaways
- Count customers, not bills: you need a phone number on each bill.
- Compare yourself with your own last quarter, not another business.
- A café and a salon have different normal rhythms.
The formula
Pick a period, say the last 90 days. Count the customers who visited two or more times. Divide by everyone who visited at least once. Multiply by 100.
A worked example
Say 400 different customers visited in 90 days, and 120 of them came twice or more. 120 divided by 400 is 0.3, so 30 in every 100 of your customers came back.
Read it for your kind of business
A café expects people every week, a salon every month or two. Compare yourself with your own last quarter, not with someone else’s number.
Count people, not bills
You need to know who each bill belongs to. A phone number on the bill is enough. Without it, every visit looks like a new person.
Put it to work.
See who’s due for this one in your own Reten.
Written by the Reten editorial team. General guidance, not legal advice: check consent and messaging rules for your business before you send.
