A business can’t rely only on new customers to sustain profit. The brand should focus on existing customers and retaining them. Here are some of the proven strategies that would help you retain your customers.
Offer Personalized Surprises
Beyond personalized marketing, make sure that your customers know that you value them as an individual. The best way to do so is by wishing them on their birthdays and anniversaries. You can also send special discount cards for the same. For example, Jawbone sends personalized handwritten cards to customers.
Make a Promise
Once you have acquired a customer, make sure to express what the customer can expect from the brand, moving on. Unrealistic promises would clearly show that you are making up flowery sentences to attract them. Thus, create a clear agenda and express what your brand could do. For instance, if you offer a one-day delivery promise, make sure to provide the same throughout the customer lifecycle and not just on their first delivery.
Build Relationships
You can build a relationship with your customer only if you can create trust. The best way to do so is by using data. The bad experiences are the right points where you can build trust. A company that offers compensation for bad experiences received 37% customer satisfaction, and those who offer both apology and compensation received 74% customer satisfaction.
Re-engage Customers
It is not possible to create fresh conversations with retained customers at regular intervals manually. Thus, you can use automation tools to offer fresh information to the customers. It could be automated email newsletters or SMS. But, make sure that the information is customized to suit the persona of the customer.
Improve Customer Service
There is no shortcut to this process. It would be best if you create an effective team, offer adequate training and resources. Create KPIs to understand where the team lags or performs well. Your customer service department should have friendly staff who offers impeccable service. At the same time, easy access to information is also essential. For instance, using a virtual phone number allows your customers to connect with your staff faster.
Utilize Feedback
You might be a large enterprise with thousands of retained customers, and it is not an excuse to stop receiving feedback. You can choose email surveys, phone surveys, web polls, and others to receive feedback. Use automation tools to analyze the feedback and create insightful strategies out of the same.
Calculate CLV
Customer Lifetime Value – CLV helps you to understand the worth of your retained customers over time. Some of your customers will have a higher CLV than others. You can create different strategies to personalize the services for such VIP customers.
Offer More Than Just Marketing Content
Yes, customers love to learn about new discounts and products. But, if you want to be a part of the customer’s buying decision and generate trust, it is imperative to offer unbiased information. It is a good strategy for inducing pre-sales trust for future purchases and retaining the customers for longer. You can use website content, live webinar, and other techniques to educate your customers. Or, you can offer a virtual phone number for the customers to learn more about your product without your marketing team trying to monetize the conversation.
Personalize Your Information
Just using your customer’s name in the conversation would offer an adequate pedestal for your customer relationship-building process. Personalization encourages loyalty, and it helps to deal with customer queries without the fear of creating an avalanche of bad word-of-mouth. There are several personalized tools in the market that allows the agent to receive information about the customer when the customer contacts the business number. Thus, personalization is possible even for larger enterprises.
Shorter Duration for Complaint Resolution
It is imperative to use tools and other techniques to reduce the time taken for addressing a complaint. It is not enough to offer personalization and empathy. Customers need results, and if you are probably taking more time than your competitors to resolve an issue, you are offering your customers a reason to switch brands.
Develop Communication Calendar
Create a calendar that will remind you to generate new content, share email newsletters, promotional content, or reconnect lost customers. This calendar will help you organize your tasks to keep your customers engaged and also allows you to avoid bombarding your customers with offers and information very frequently.
Beyond these, there are several strategies that a business can follow to retain its customers. It is best to choose the tactic that would suit your business and budget. You need not buy sophisticated end-to-end customer relationship software for this task. Sometimes, all that your business needs are a little motivation amongst your sales personnel and a reliable virtual phone number.
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