Running a quilt shop means juggling a thousand customer touchpoints (or at least it feels like that many).
You have special orders, classes, repairs, shipments, guild communications — it’s enough to make any retail store owner’s head spin.
When customers are calling for updates on special orders or class schedules, and you’re flipping through sticky notes and scrolling through manual spreadsheets to try to find the answers, things can fall through the cracks. Then, customers get frustrated, you get overwhelmed, and your store’s reputation takes a hit.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
In this post, we’ll cover the practical tips and tools you can use to streamline customer communication and keep shoppers happy, informed, and loyal to your business.
Quilters are a unique customer base. They’re passionate artists who tend to form deeper-than-average relationships with the shops that serve them well.
When you help a quilter find the perfect fabric for a passion project or teach them a new technique in a workshop, you’re earning loyalty that can last years (or, in some cases, generations).
But the thing about loyalty is that it hinges on trust. To earn and keep your customers’ trust, you must provide consistent and reliable communication.
And you’ll have plenty to communicate with your customers about! Unlike general retail stores, quilt shops manage special fabric orders, coordinate classes, track sewing machine repairs, and run block-of-the-month subscriptions. Each of these touchpoints needs to be approached with care and consideration if you want to avoid disappointing your best customers.
Communication breakdowns cost you more than just customer trust. You’ll be stuck with unclaimed special orders that won’t sell, half-empty classes, and negative reviews online that drive away new potential customers before they ever set foot in your door.
But when you’re running a small business, you’re already overwhelmed. Manually tracking customer communications is a recipe for disaster.
Instead, you need the right tools and strategies to keep everything running smoothly.
Special orders are a necessary part of serving quilters.
When customers want a specific print or specialty tool you don’t stock, you’ll have to order it for them — which requires effective communication.
If you’re tracking special orders manually, it’s easy to forget to call the customer when their order is in, or, worse, forget to call your distributor in the first place.
Related Read: How To Manage Serialized Inventory in Your Fabric Store
Instead, you need a system that logs every vendor order, tracks its status from "ordered" to "arrived," and notifies customers automatically when their order is ready for pickup.
The best way to manage special orders is to invest in a centralized system that allows you to set up these automatic notifications and check the status at any point in the process. A point of sale (POS) solution like LikeSew helps you avoid the awkward “let me look into that” conversation when a customer is calling for an update for the third time. Instead, you can rely on the system to send automated text updates to the customer when their order arrives.
You’ve got eight people registered for your next quilting class. But that morning, you realize you forgot to send out reminders. You burn an hour trying to call everyone, only to get sent to voicemail on almost every call. By the time class starts, only three students show up.
Yikes.
Class no-shows are a killer for your bottom line because they waste valuable prep time and supplies. But trying to remember to send out regular reminders when you’re already juggling a dozen other business management tasks just isn’t feasible.
The solution is to set up automated reminders that go out without any manual effort from you. Here’s a best-practice reminder cadence you can use to get started:
This cadence keeps your class top-of-mind and gives students time to get the materials they need without being spammy.
The right class management tool will let you schedule these reminders when you create the event in the system, handling everything automatically so you don’t have to worry about remembering. A system like LikeSew will track who's registered, record confirmed attendance, and send follow-up messages after class asking for feedback or promoting your next workshop.
Offering repair services is a solid strategy for building customer loyalty, but it only works when customers feel informed throughout the process.
When a quilter drops off their Bernina, they’re trusting you with one of their most prized possessions. If they feel like you’re handling that responsibility lightly, you’re hurting customer loyalty — not helping it.
Avoid the stress by keeping repair customers in the loop with status milestones. Some standard ones are "Received," "Diagnosed," "Parts Ordered," "In Progress," and "Ready for Pickup.” Track these statuses in your store management software solution and commit to updating customers at each stage.
This doesn't mean calling everyone manually. Instead, set up a simple ticketing system where you log each repair job and trigger automatic notifications when the status changes. A quick text saying. "We've diagnosed the issue with your Bernina, parts arriving Monday," keeps your customer happy and prevents repeated phone calls.
When your POS includes service tracking features, you can attach notes, photos, and cost estimates directly to each ticket, creating a complete communication history that any staff member can reference when the customer calls.
Customer segmentation is key to successful customer communication.
Not all your customers want to hear from you the same way or at the same frequency. Some appreciate a quick text update, others find texts intrusive and would rather get an email. Some customers want to know about all your new collections, others only care about class updates.
If you want to avoid customers hitting “unsubscribe” on your latest email blast, you need to start tracking customer preferences and communicating with your audience the way they prefer.
Related Read: 10 Retail Customer Service Tips for Fabric Stores
How? It’s simple: ask!
When a customer makes a purchase or registers for a class, ask them about their preferred communication medium and note that preference in your quilt shop CRM. Once your system has this information logged, use your POS reporting features to segment your customers into lists based on their preferences, and communicate with them only via their preferred contact methods.
If managing your block-of-the-month program is threatening to overwhelm you, you’re not alone. These programs are great for steady revenue and community-building potential, but they require consistent communication.
If you want to run your block-of-the-month program efficiently, you need to set up a predictable communication rhythm. Here’s a sample rhythm we’ve seen work in other quilt shops:
You can manage this manually by setting yourself a calendar reminder on the first and 15th of every month, but there’s a better way. Automate your reminders as much as possible. When a customer enrolls in your program, they should receive monthly notifications automatically.
A POS and quilt shop management system like LikeSew will often include block-of-the-month management features that handle monthly billing and send reminders automatically.
Your most loyal customers often belong to guilds, bees, and stitching groups. Creating partnerships with these groups can bring lots of new business into your shop — but only if you manage group communications the right way.
Use your POS and customer management system to tag customers by their group affiliations. That way, when a guild plans a special event, or you’re offering a group discount to a specific stitching club, you can send one targeted message to everyone in the group without hunting through records manually.
This approach works for promoting relevant events, too. Different guilds will be interested in different classes and events. When you track and segment your customer base, you can more easily send the right event invites to the customers most likely to sign up.
A first-time customer just took your beginner quilting class and bought a ton of starter supplies. You think, "I should check in next week and see how her first project is going."
But by the time next week happens, you’ve completely forgotten about the customer, and you never follow up. That customer doesn’t end up returning for the intermediate class, and you’ve lost an opportunity to win a new loyal fan.
Follow-up communication is one of the best ways to make customers feel seen and win more loyalty, but it only works if you actually send those messages. Trusting your memory is the worst method of ensuring that these follow-ups happen. Instead, you need to set up automated systems and reminders.
Related Read: 5 Inspiring Email Newsletter Ideas for Quilt Stores
After someone completes their first class, schedule a three-day follow-up. After you complete a repair, schedule a one-month "how's your machine running?" message. These quick checkpoints build stronger relationships with your customers.
Modern retail systems can automate these triggers, so you don’t have to rely on your memory or a stack of sticky notes. When a qualifying event, like a purchase or class enrollment, occurs, the system creates a follow-up task or sends an automatic message, just like that.
The difference between scrambling and struggling to stay in touch with your customers and proactive, effective communication isn’t working longer hours — it’s having the right systems and tools in place.
When you nail customer communication, they’ll leave rave reviews about your responsiveness, sign up for more classes, and trust you with more repairs and special orders. Using the tips in this post, you can set your store up for success.
Stop losing customers to communication gaps. Like Sew's all-in-one platform puts customer communication on autopilot with automated reminders, order tracking, service management, and customer profiles that keep everyone informed without the manual work. Schedule a demo today and see how the right tools can help you master customer communication.