A repeat customer is anyone who returns after a first purchase. The definition is simple; the difficulty is knowing who they are. Without a record, a regular who visits three times a week and a first-time visitor look identical at the counter, and a regular who stops coming disappears without anyone noticing.
It matters because repeat business is the part of trade a business can influence directly: the customer already knows you, so the question is only whether there is a reason to come back. Example: a pet groomer sees a dog every six weeks; each appointment after the first is a repeat visit, and the groomer's real question is how many first-time owners become six-weekly regulars.
A repeat customer is not the same as a loyal customer in the emotional sense, and a repeat visit is not the same as a retained customer: retention asks whether someone stayed over a period, repeat visits count how often they came.
In the Loyal-T Cards dashboard, visits recorded by your staff are split into new and repeat, so the repeat share of your recorded trade is visible. In the pet-groomer case study, 4,679 of 9,555 recorded visits over twelve months were repeat visits.
Related terms
Customer Retention Rate
The percentage of customers from an earlier period who are still customers at the end of a later period.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
The total revenue a business can expect from one customer over the whole period they remain a customer.
Loyalty Program
A structured way of rewarding customers for repeat purchases or continued custom.