How to tell your customers about a price increase

You've held off for a year: energy bills, rent on the premises, the supplier who has put materials up twice. The numbers are clear — your prices have to go up. What's less clear is how to tell the client who has come in every month for six years, or the company that sends you regular work and always pays on time. And because it isn't clear, you keep putting it off.

This piece is for the owner of a service business or any business with regular customers — a salon, a tutoring centre, an accountancy practice, a repair shop, a maintenance firm — who knows the price list needs updating and dreads saying so. By the end you'll have a sequence to follow, a message you can adapt, and a clear idea of what to say when someone pushes back.

Before the message: let the numbers decide, not the nerves

Most badly handled price rises go wrong before a single word is written. They go wrong because the decision is only half made: you go up "a little" so as not to upset anyone, realise it isn't enough, and raise prices again four months later. Two notices in a year annoy people far more than one well-thought-out increase.

So before you draft anything, settle three things:

• How much, and on what. Does everything go up equally, or only some services? Sometimes it makes more sense to raise what costs you most to deliver and leave your entry-level service alone, since that's the one that brings in new customers.
• From when. A specific date, not "from next month". If you sell packages, memberships or quotes that have already been accepted, decide what happens to what's already been sold.
• What stays the same. If prepaid packages keep the old price, signed quotes are honoured or monthly customers get an extra month's grace, write it down. What doesn't change is almost always the first thing people ask about.

One practical point: if you have signed contracts with clients — annual maintenance, retainers, business services — check what they say about price reviews and notice periods before announcing anything. If they say nothing, ask whoever handles your paperwork. Far better to find out now than to have a client point it out to you.

The order matters more than the wording

Not every customer should hear at the same time or in the same way. A sequence that works well:

1. Your team first. If anyone on your team will face the question at the counter or on the phone, they need the new prices, the date and the answers before anyone else. Nothing looks worse than a customer who learns from the sign while the person serving them says "oh, I didn't know".
2. Your most important customers, one by one. Those ten or twenty regulars deserve a personal message with their name and, ideally, what the change means for them specifically: "your cut and colour goes from €58 to €62".
3. Everyone else, with a general notice. An email or WhatsApp to your list, a sign on the premises and an updated website, all on the same day.
4. New customers just see the new price. No explanation needed — for them, it's simply what you charge.

Leave a sensible gap between the notice and the start date for your kind of business. For something people book weekly, three or four weeks is usually enough; for customers on a subscription or contract, a month at least. That gap gives people time to get used to the idea and, incidentally, to book a couple more appointments at the old price — which is no bad thing for anyone.

How to write the notice

A good price-rise notice is short, specific and doesn't apologise five times. It has four parts: what's changing, from when, why in one sentence, and what stays the same. Something like:

Hi Marta, just letting you know that from 1 December we're updating our prices: your usual treatment will go from €45 to €49. We hadn't touched prices in two years and product costs have gone up a lot. Any packages you've already bought stay exactly as they are. If you have any questions, just ask — and thanks for sticking with us!

Notice what it doesn't do: it doesn't justify itself with a paragraph on inflation, it doesn't promise "this is the last time", and it doesn't hide the new price behind a link. Stating the exact figure feels blunter, but it actually reassures people: they know where they stand and don't imagine something worse.

Steer clear of euphemisms like "price adjustment" when what you mean is an increase. People spot them instantly and trust you less for it.

The replies you'll get (and what to say)

In the days after the notice, messages will come in. Nearly all of them fall into four groups, and it pays to have your answer ready before they arrive:

• "Fine, thanks for letting me know." The majority. A simple "thank you" is enough.
• Practical questions. "What about my package?", "Is my appointment on the 28th at the new price?", "Does this affect the annual maintenance too?" This is where you find out whether you really settled the decisions in step one. If they're written down, each one takes a minute.
• Polite complaints. "Oh, another rise…" You don't need to win anyone over. Acknowledge the annoyance, restate the reason and what stays the same in one line, and leave it there.
• The customer asking for an exception. "I've been coming for ten years — can't you keep my price as it was?" That's your call, case by case. You might say yes to a particular person, offer them one more month at the old price, or hold firm. What you don't want is whoever happens to be answering that day making the decision without checking with you.

And some people will leave. That's normal, and worth accepting before you send anything: if your increase is reasonable, the ones who go tend to be the customers who only came for the price — often the same ones who took up the most of your time.

Where an AI agent fits (and where it doesn't)

Part of all this is pure logistics: sending the notice to each customer with their own figure, answering the same questions about packages and dates over and over, updating what you tell people on WhatsApp, and noting who complained or asked for something special. That part can be delegated. An agent that already knows your new prices, the date and the list of what stays the same can answer the practical questions instantly, at any hour, with exactly the information your team would give.

What it shouldn't do is negotiate. Requests for exceptions, heated complaints and valued customers who are wavering should come to you, with the context already summarised, so you can decide. You approve, it executes.

An honest caveat: if your regulars fit on one sheet of paper and you know them all by name, you don't need any automation for this. Write to them yourself — that personal message is worth more than any system. An agent starts to pay off when you have hundreds of customers, several channels and a team answering in shifts, and the real risk is everyone giving a slightly different answer.

In short

Make the whole decision at once, tell your team and key customers first, give a reasonable notice period, state the exact figure and have answers ready for the four typical reactions. Do that, and a price rise stops being an awkward conversation and becomes just another notice.

If you'd like someone to handle the notices and the repeat questions while you keep the decisions, take a look at our agents.