Customer retention determines the rate at which an organization is able to keep customers over a certain period of time. Using some of these tips could strengthen and increase your overall customer retention abilities:
1. Have a mission in mind
Establish a set of values beforehand because this will draw customers who can relate and hold similar values. Building on a mission provides a foundation to always look back to when in doubt or need a path to follow. Today, more consumers are aware of the effects of their consumption and habits, so be sure to consider this. As consumers are more aware of social responsibilities, businesses integrating something people care about makes for a more empowering experience. This can be the cause of a dramatic increase in engagement and retention.
2. Understand your clients
Before proceeding with anything, it is important to spend the necessary time getting to know your customers and their needs. Advising your team to spend time getting to know the customers will be a rewarding step in your customer retention strategy. The main premise behind this is learning to take note of key customer traits that can be utilized. Fully understanding your customers and their needs are insightful in knowing how to perfectly cater to those needs. Catering to those needs is a form of providing high value and keep them coming back.
3. Provide satisfactory solutions
In instances of mistakes, your team should learn to apologize and provide a satisfactory and adequate pardon to display empathy. Discovering the root cause of problems to fix and avoiding a domino effect with other customers will be very helpful. This process will help to avoid and reduce customer problems in general and increase satisfied customers. A known problematic business produces customers that are sensitive to price and constant problems are off-putting to customers. Customer experience with products and/or service should be as seamless as possible.
4. Never stop selling
Too many businesses forget to give customers a reason or a reminder to come back. No matter how great the first sale was, don’t become complacent by letting the customer go and explore other businesses. Follow up sales with actions that include thanking the customer, enforce a system to sell again and encourage a worthy sale. In business, earning loyalty, referral and repeat customers comes from persistence and action, which is where the real selling begins.
If you are into online business, the selling from your website can become cherry on the top. You can go for email marketing to your existing customers and ask for referrals or even you can upsell. Suppose, for a car insurance company which has a business online, upsell can be done if they ask the customers to compare car insurance to choose the better option for them.
5. An effective customer service
A noteworthy customer service experience is one where customers can’t stop referring to others based on their wonderful experience. Beyond offering a great product, escalating that product experience includes providing customer service that exceeds expectations. This includes going above and beyond, quick inquiry responses, timely delivery of service, defect-free products, and an outstanding team. Strong customer service experience influences customer loyalty and repeats customers and a weak one sends them away to your competitors.
6. Get personal
For businesses, being seen as human proves to be a tough, but necessary task in customers feeling relatable to you. As previously mentioned, customer service is important, but along with that is exuding a presence of authenticity with a human touch. For example, many big brands turn to Twitter and other social media networks to connect with customers on a personal level. This requires truly getting in touch with the identity of your audience and connecting with them on their preferred various platforms. People don’t enjoy cookie cutter messages, make sure they are personalized and have a human feel.
7. Complaints bring growth
Receiving complaints is a natural aspect of a business, but turning those complaints into testimonials is a skill that encourages retention. When a customer complains, successful businesses use this as an opportunity to improve and re-establish satisfaction. Formulating a healthy customer complaint system proves your commitment to excellence and the need to satisfy the customer. If customers aren’t complaining to you, they’re complaining to others, which is even worse. It is best to open the conversation for them to complain to you directly, so you can turn around those complaints about retention.
8. Confidence in your product
Above all, exhibit confidence in your product, service or business offerings. This is because the level of confidence proves that you offer the best value in service to your customers. Customers won’t hold value to any product unless the business exemplifies the confidence, which becomes evident to others. A lack of confidence leads to a fruitless brand that carries monumental retention difficulties.
9. Reward system
Nobody loves rewards like customers, especially ones that feel loyal and close to your business. Customers who take time to send referrals deserve to feel appreciated by you and that appreciation comes in reward form. If your budget doesn’t allow for tangible rewards, taking time to send well thought out and personalized thank you messages will do. A popular reward system is presenting a referral program where customers are rewarded through new purchases of their referrals. This is a fun way to increase retention and make customers feel personally invested in your business.
10. Integrity
This could be the most important tip on the list for businesses across many fields and industries. Retention directly correlates to long-term success, which is achieved through trust and integrity from your biggest supporters, your customers. Your provided product or services must exhibit integrity by matching up to the words and actions you take. Loss of integrity causes family television characters to lose their place when their real-life personality doesn’t quite match up. Customers are humans and humans are engaged with honesty and transparency from businesses who live up to their own values.
There are endless options for formulating strategies for effective customer retention. It is important to outline that there are no shortcuts to business and it must be conducted in a healthy fashion.
