In today’s world of marketing, customer retention is one of the key areas which marketers tend to ignore. Everyone thinks creating new customers is the key to profitability.

Contrary to popular belief, research shows that companies usually spend up to 3 times more on acquiring new customers than trying to retain an existing one. On the other hand, existing customers with their trust on your side spend up to 50% more on your offerings as compared to new ones. There’s also a belief that improving customer retention by a marginal 5% can result in revenue growth up to 50%.

When the stakes are that high, it’s only fair for every company to prepare a smart customer retention strategy. Let’s talk about 7 of the most effective strategies that can help you in this regard:

Interactive Onboarding Process

In so many instances, companies celebrate after acquiring a new customer (which they should) only to turn their backs on that guy & focus on getting another new customer. That’s a recipe for disaster!

It’s your responsibility from day-1 to interact with the customer, satisfy his business needs & win his trust. Train or assist them on how to use your offering, so that they get maximum return for their investment on your product/service. Maximum RoI, will always keep their trust on you.

Customer Surveys

Bill Gates once famously said “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning” & I couldn’t agree more 🙂

No matter how efficiently you track your customers’ usage, you will never know everything about their struggles or pain points. It’s a wise idea to proactively carry out customer surveys to gain insights into how you can make your product more user-friendly.

PRO TIP: Once you have worked on fixing a particular pain point of a customer, go ahead & tell him about the same. A personalized email would go a long way in establishing that connection.

Regular Followups

The most effective way to establish a relationship with your customers is by regularly being in touch with them. You or anyone from your team should reach out to every customer once in a while. If you’re into services, the frequency has to be low; ideally once or twice every week.

Regular follow-ups to check-in how things are going & if they need any assistance may give rise to customer loyalty. There’s no short-cut to this 🙂

Offer the Best Support

Post-sale customer support & service plays a huge role in customer experience. And as many as 80% of customers (from all kinds of categories) say they wouldn’t hesitate to pay more for an offering if that comes with better support or service.

Valuing your customers’ time is the single most important thing if you plan to provide best-in-class customer support. Nobody likes to wait for their issues to be resolved. Here are a few key points to consider:

• Provide as many options/medium as possible for a customer to reach you i.e. chat, social media, whatsapp, skype, email to name a few.
• Always try to solve a query/request on the 1st point of contact itself. The more you escalate, higher the chances for the customer losing his confidence on your company.

Give a Personal Touch

Treating your customers personally does go a long way in making them feel comfortable with you & form a warmer relationship. Hence, it’s always wise to dig into your CRM & give a look at all the earlier interactions you have had with a customer, before you plan to reach out to him again.

If you have an idea about his previous pain-points or feedback, it will make him feel like you care for him. That makes a huge difference in winning customer loyalty.

Set Clear Expectations

Nobody likes to be in the dark while making a deal, only to realize that there’s a communication mismatch midway. You should always set clear expectations with your customers from the very beginning, to ensure that both parties are on the same page.

Signing off SLAs (Service Level Agreements) go a long way in providing a peace of mind to customers. It also ensures that you’re accountable to deliver what has been promised.

Keep Your Customers Updated

As users of any product or service, we always look forward to all the latest updates from the maker/provider. That makes us feel involved & attached with the company. We feel cheated if a company silently announces an upgrade without letting us know.

The same theory applies to all your customers too. Hence, always keep your users informed about everything that’s happening with your company. Regular email newsletters are always a good idea in such cases 🙂

Wrapping Up…

The most important factor in customer retention is keeping a keen attention on your customers & their needs. Make them involved, interact with them, ask for their feedback & provide the best support you can. Key here is to establish a warm relationship with your customers & keep them happy.

Happier customers mean higher customer retention 🙂

Do you have anything to talk about customer retention? Drop your comments below. I’d love to read them all.

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