Customer Retention Strategies That Really Work

You are not just another solution provider in the market. But your relationship-building effort and dedication have brought you a vast customer base that believes in you. You have provided them value and better customer services than others, which made them trust you with their money. You may have ignored it many times earlier, but we want to make it clear that customer retention is one of your key revenue drivers.

Perhaps, some of you would not be able to digest this fact, so let us understand it through some statistics.

· Customer acquisition is good to get new business, but it can cost 5-times more than customer retention.

· You can observe 25%-95% more profit by raising customer retention by 5%.

· Success rate of doing business with existing customers is 60%-70%, while success rate of business with new customers only scores 5–20%.

· Your existing and loyal customers are 7-times more likely to try a new service from you.

Now that you have seen the profits of focusing on customer retention, start structuring a customer retention strategy. To increase your customer retention rates, you must employ a solid and organized customer retention strategy. We have listed a few successful customer retention strategies that you can use to push your revenue up.

1. Build A Powerful Onboarding Program

Like many other firms, don’t make a mistake of losing your attention from the customer after the deal is closed. Your prospect’s journey ends when the deal is closed, but your customer’s journey with you starts from here. From this point of time only, start engaging your new customers with a strategic onboarding program. Now, you may think that your product/service is user-friendly, so customers themselves can train themselves using your comprehensive user-manual. Yes, they can train themselves, but you should not leave this chance. Customer onboarding can make your customers feel that you are so inclined towards their benefits and always there to help. Never lose this chance to prove you better than any other firm in the market.

2. Ask For Customer Feedback

Most of the bottlenecks in your business can be so concealed that you cannot recognize them, but your users can. Many companies are scared of asking customers for feedback thinking that this strategy can bring a rain of negative comments. This can be the case, but criticisms are your savior. Your one customer faced some issue, improve that, and don’t let another one face the same issue. Your most unhappy customer is going to be your best source of learning. There are not going to be only negatives, there are going to be few people praising you. Use those feedback to see at what you are good at and keep that good work up.

3. Communicate Proactively With Your Customers

There are huge-huge chances that your customer will not reach back to you through feedback. But, your work is not to sit back and relax, instead, make someone reach out to the customers on set time intervals. Make a simple phone call and ask how are things going, is your service/product fulfilling their purpose, ask for ideas to improve your work. This very simple strategy can make your customers feel valued and enhance their experience with you. One proactive phone call can reflect your willingness to go above & beyond for serving your customers.

4. Update Your Customers About New Developments

Treat your customers like your partners and your partners must know about every update or new development. This is a pro approach to keep your customers engaged. If it’s company executive replacement, collaboration, new product/service launches, upcoming product/service, or anything that is going on. The more your customers will feel included and valued, the more loyal they will be to your firm.

5. Establish Customer Advisory Board (CAB)

Your most loyal customers can help you with the most important information about your company. Give these customers a chance to share their valuable feedback by establishing a panel. You can hold a meeting in your office or a video conference to gain valuable insights from your customer’s mind. Allow them to voice their concerns and suggest improvements. Don’t just create a customer advisory board for the sake of doing it, work on those key takeaways, and improve your customer retention.

6. Provide Industry-Best Customer Service

Customers are no longer basing loyalty on brands. The more you serve better, the longer they are staying. Almost 56% of people globally abandoned the company for poor customer service experience. Around 47% of consumers have switched to another competitor due to bad customer service. Now you know how important good customer service for customer retention is. Customers can need support at any time. Make sure you are available every time via various channels, such as chat, email, social media, and call. Try to resolve a query on the first interaction only, without escalations.

7. Engage Your Customers With Educational Resources

Don’t ever leave your consumers high and dry after the onboarding process. Reflect that you are ready to educate them anytime down the road. With time, your product may evolve. You need to tell and educate them about every update. Share knowledge and value with them regularly through blogs, training videos, guides, and more to ensure that they are always able to use your product. Don’t just post to promote your business, instead, offer them value & knowledge. This is one of the proven strategies of customer retention that works for almost every business.

Winning new customers for your business is crucial, but retaining the existing one is more important to sustain in the market. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes and think about what you would like to get from a company. Start using CRM software to know bottlenecks causing customers to leave your business. Improve those pain points and keep moving forward.

We would suggest you get a free trial of CRM software, like FinCRM, and analyze your customer retention rate. This industry-best CRM software can share valuable sales insights so that you can keep going always.

Note: As you are already here, share some more ideas about client retention with us.