PUBLISHED IN
Dec 03, 2021 Category:
Digital Marketing
Dec 03, 2021 Category:
Digital Marketing
4 Most Trusted Tips to Improve Customer Retention
Reading Time: 9 minutesAs a business, getting new customers, earning their reviews, getting good ratings are some of the parameters that you must have been considering to assess your performance. What matters is not just success or a great performance, all that matters is retaining that success, and that comes with not just customer acquisition, but with customer retention.
Yes, customer retention is a step ahead of customer acquisition that indicates the brand’s ability to convert the one-time customers to permanent ones. The more your customers will follow you, the higher would be your customer retention. This also indicates the consistent in the quality of what you have had been offering to your customers.
Table Of Content
How Significant is Customer Retention?
Well, the best thing about customer retention is, that it is easier than customer acquisition, which requires building up a repo with the new customer, trying to convince them about your product and service offerings, creating a sense of trust and faith in them. Customer retention, on the other hand, does not require as much efforts except additional benefits which may keep them hanging on you, and make them come to you again and again. But for that you need to know your customers, and that what they like and expect from you. Understanding them, their likings, their expectations is what helps the brands improve and strengthen their trust among the audience.
The customer feels that even after the purchase, they are attended to, which indicates how valued they are for the brand. When this sense of value lacks they also start lacking interest in the brand. Finally, they leave!
Stats have revealed that the lack of customer retention is the major reason behind why customers leave a brand or a company, as they feel that they are no longer taken care of.
Source: SuperOffice
For Product Managers:
To be able to retain customers, it is very important for product managers to keep improving or updating the product time to time. For example, the mobile app owners need to work on the apps for optimizing user experience or else in a matter of time, they get uninstalled by people for being outmoded and not being able to perform as expected. So it is important to take regular feedbacks from the customers, so that you get to know about what are they expecting further from your product or service. The regular feedback will help them to resolve the issues that keep rising. Not only this, they may keep adding new features to the app time to time, which may let it be in demand always. The product manager then can track the customer behaviour and can accordingly make further amendments in the app. This way they can always be updated about their customers’ ever-changing priorities and can update their product too.
For Marketing Teams:
Customer retention impacts ROI, one objective the marketers are always up to.
Do you know, customer retention leads to customer acquisition as well? How?
Well, all that customer retention requires is, keeping the existing customers happy, so that they not only stay there, but also recommend your product to others, leading to contributing to your customer list. So, retargeting the already existing happy customers makes them loyal. They give good ratings and reviews and this leads to further customer acquisition. The higher customer retention helps in generating a good brand image and reputation as well. On the basis of feedbacks received, the marketers can even design further strategies.
Myth Associated with Customer Retention
Usually it is thought that brands don’t really need to work on customer retention, as once the customer acquisition happens, the customer remains.
Owing to this thought, 44% of businesses focus on customer acquisition, while only 18% focus on customer retention, as reported by a source.
Well, this should not be so. as due to the growing competition, the customers get a huge range of options before them, and so become selective.
The consumer of today has become very choosy and they take no time to abandon any product or service if they don’t find them as useful, competent or worthy. So it is very crucial for brands and businesses to retain the customers that they acquire.
So, you certainly need to work towards boosting this very important aspect of business performance – Customer Retention.
There are numerous ways how you can increase customer retention, though it all varies business to business. Well, there are few aspects that apply on every business, be it any profile or industry, which pertain to learning about the customer behavior, meeting their requirements and expectations, getting them the value-driven services.
Let’s know about some easy-to-apply tips that you can use to boost customer retention, as it is the most crucial factor for the success of your business, whichever be it – an online store, a big enterprise a technology company or even a chic garment store!
1. Reward Your Customers for Loyalty
It is important to understand that your customers form the base of your performance. They not only spend money on your offering, but also spread the word about you to the people around.
Imagine how would you feel, when your parents rewarded you for anything you did. How would you feel? Great, right! Certainly, you would feel inspired to do more good. The customers are just the same. So, initiate such customer loyalty programs such as giving discounts and incentives to them through exclusive offers just like how Amazon Prime offers its regular customers, quite some benefits which includes a two-day shipping on a good range of products, absolutely Free!
This way it provides value to its buyers which allows it to keep the customers hanging on to it.
And the interesting part lies in the fact that the Prime program leads to losses yet they make up for it with increased number of transactions that Prime membership leads to.
2. Provide Excellent Customer Support Service
This is quite evident to know that customer support is very important for customer retention. Yet there are few aspects of it that brands tend to overlook at times. Irrespective of what profile does your business belong to, customer support service helps in keeping the brand in the eyes of customers. It gets referrals and of course helps in customer acquisition, leading to increased sales.
89% of companies admitted that great customer service plays a pivotal role in customer retention.
Bad customer service may cause damage to the brand reputation, no matter, how great the brand must have been. The major attributes of a good customer service are – clear communication, empathising with customer issues and sorting them out at the earliest.
3. Conduct Customer Response Surveys
Working on assumptions is certainly not right when it is about your customers. Instead of simply assuming about how they feel, what they want, conduct surveys and let them tell you about it. By doing so, you will have deep insight into their experiences and accordingly you will be able to improve your services.
In the words of Sean Ellis, the author at LogMein, “The shortcut that I use is to run a survey: ‘How would you feel if you could no longer use this product? I’m looking for the people that answer ‘very disappointed!’ They have the answers to where the value is in the product. Then I ask, ‘What’s the benefit you have gotten? What were you using before? Why did you decide to start?’ I’m learning everything about those people because they tell me what the value is.”
Whatever you wish to know, you will be able to mould your survey accordingly. For example, if you want to know about the services offered on your eCommerce site, you can ask the questions accordingly, like what the customers think of your checkout process or how are the products presented, and lot more.
You can even include the customers who unsubscribed from you service.
4. Keep the Customers Informed & Engaged
The sole objective of a business should not be just to sell. It is very important for them to keep informing, educating and engaging them about their product or service that they had bought. Become a voice of trust for them, so that they look up to you for more.
Present them the useful information in the form of Articles, DIYs, Tutorials, Case studies, YouTube videos and Podcasts. This form of content helps in customer retention as customers become regular on such posts for the latest.
So, Let’s Conclude!
As a successful business, you may have the ability to drive great customer acquisition but that does not mean, that job is done, and that you should just relax and enjoy watching out the performance. Simply selling your product does not mean that the purpose of marketing is over.
Your efforts to build a good reputation with your existing customers should start now, so that they don’t jump off the ship. Apart from this, they should also be driving more customers to your brands through customer ratings, reviews and even word-of-mouth referrals.
It does not really matter on what strategy or principles do you work, you need both time and effort to build brand recognition and loyalty. You need to have such a high customer retention that customer acquisition starts happening on its own through your loyal customers. Since they will be marketing your name, no matter, being unaware, you should be pleasing them loyalty programs. Develop a community that stays with your brand and rest all will come with the flow.
The digital marketers at Tarika Tech understand these very crucial aspects of marketing and help the brands generate higher customer retention.
Know more about our Digital Marketing Services!
