The bedrock of growing a sustainable business is managing your customer retention rate. It is an essential factor for the success of all types of businesses, whether it is a consumer brand, SaaS business, B2B company, an agency, or any other organization.
What is customer retention? – Customer retention means a company is able to keep its customers over a specific period of time. It is well known that the goal of a business is to make and retain a customer. Retention deals with keeping a customer.
Following infographic tells how important it is for the businesses to retain the customers.
How can you improve customer retention? – To render better services and make quality products will be the obvious answer. But we are in a time of fierce competition and providing quality product or service is usually not enough to ensure customer retention. Here are the top 5 strategies you can use to improve your customer retention and increase the growth of your business.
Give great service
The impact of customer service on both potential and existing customers is overwhelming. When customer service is lacking, there will be a decrease in customer retention. You have to deal with your customer efficiently, courteously, and promptly.
You need to pay attention and listen to their needs and meet them as efficiently as possible. Your customers will remember this, but they will remember bad service even more. According to a recent survey, 68% of consumers would react to a lousy experience by posting about it on a social network in order to tell their family and friends. This bad experience can quickly reach thousands and can cause a massive loss to your business as each Facebook profile has an average of 155 connections.
There is always a great value in making sure you deliver positive customer service. You should build your business around the delivery of excellent customer service. Majority of customers are ready to pay more for better customer experience. And this means you will not only get loyal customers but also have business growth.
Be quick to resolve issues
Not every product performs exactly according to its purpose, and no customer relationship is perfect. Things are going to go wrong and sometimes paid services won’t meet expectations. Your responsibility is to accept that when you were unable to meet your customer expectations. Regardless of “why or how” you must work hard to ensure the issues are resolved to satisfy them.
The truth is your apology is not enough; your main objective should be to solve the immediate issue, with the intention to find and flag the root cause. By so doing, you will solve a systematic problem and prevent other customers from having a similar issue. According to research, reducing problems is key to customer retention. When you readily tell your customer what is going on, and are proactive in trying to solve any issue which arises from using your product or service. Your customers will remember this and will not have any reason to leave and feel their purchase are unsafe with you next time.
Keep in touch
Many of your customers’ relationship will be a business-to-business partnership. At the center of this relationship, there will be an engagement of one person with another. It is in your best interest to gather contact data on your customers whenever you can and keep it updated. Ask a new visitor to your site to opt-in to your list. With this contact data, you can add personal touches to your customers’ relationship by sending them handwritten notes, special offers, or new products and services, a small gift, or birthday card. Use anything as an excuse to keep your company in their minds, and this will go a long way in ensuring customer retention.
Reward loyalty
One of the strategies to retain your customers is to recognize and implement a program that will reward your loyal customers. Once in a while, you should reward a loyal customer with a special discount or free product to build your relationship with them and provide incentives to patronize you again.
You can get creative in rewarding your loyal customers by ongoing additions, which makes your customers feel your products consistently get better. You need to add new updates, evolve with time, and look for ways to do more for your customers. Also, the creation of compound benefits or a disadvantage of withdrawing after a certain point can ensure customer retention.
Thank your customers
There is a tendency of you having competitors in your area of production, and this means your customers get options. Whether or not they chose you because of your reputation, pricing, or convenience, the fact that they patronize you is something that you appreciate, and you have to show it. A personal note or simple thank you can have a great impact on a customer, and help establish an emotional connection they will not forget easily. Thank them every time, whether they are your smallest customer or your biggest, for choosing you. Let them know in deeds and words how important their patronage to your business.
If your customers go out of their way to recommend your business to others, let them know that you see and appreciate it. When you see someone recommending your product and service on a social network, for instance, reply by thanking the person. This will show you are paying attention and that you value their recommendation. “Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” Mother Teresa
Conclusion
Having new customers is a sign of business growth, but not being able to keep existing customers is definitely too expensive. Your existing customers are more likely to buy from you than new ones; this will give you a chance to increase your profit.
The strategies above are some of the key ways of improving your customer retention, but they are not a panacea. Your product and service will be the crucial element in retaining your customers, and there is no alternative for that.
Note, customer retention is something you have to work at and improve, regularly (not a one-time effort), at the individual level of your business. It is an ongoing process; there should not be a point where you would see a reason to stop improving.
NeuroTags Consumer Marketing platform helps brands in retaining and engaging customers.
