“Everyone wants to live on the top of the mountain, but they don’t know it requires great efforts to climb that mountain.” Those who have successful businesses, they have not made it big with a great amount of money. Instead, they made their business grow by big ideas and sensible business strategies. Successful businesses have many happy customers and these happy customers make the business successful. By happy customers, we mean those who keep coming back to their favorite website or e-commerce store for shopping. Jason Fried, the CEO of Basecamp, said on Inc, “If you take care of your existing customers, they will take care of your new customers”.
No one can deny the fact that most of us focus on creating strategies and struggle for getting new customers. The interest of many business individuals shifts to acquiring new customers. In this process, they neglect their existing customers. Eventually, a strong dip is noticed in customer retention rates, which is not good news. It has been found that the average business loses 20% of its customers every year by failing to maintain customer relationship. Moreover, acquiring new customer costs you 7 times the amount spent on customer retention. That’s why businesses need to pay attention towards old customer retention. Before we find out these ways, lets discuss what customer retention is and how it can prove helpful for your business growth.
What Is Customer Retention?
Customer Retention includes the activities and actions that businesses need to take in today’s competitive environment. These actions and strategies should be profitable and cost-effective. These should prevent your existing customers from defecting to other companies. Customer retention not only retains your frequent shoppers but also increases your revenue; reduce customer acquisition cost and referrals.
So, if you wish to maintain your business growth, it is imperative that you should give importance to your already existing customers. There are several customer retention tactics that you can follow.
1. Reducing Regrets:
It takes enormous time, effort and money to build an initial customer base. But if you let this relationship go unattended, soon they will lose interest in your business and this can even lead to something worse. The best way to avoid this situation is never let your customers go. If you get successful in working out on this leakage, then there is 100% possibility that your growth rate will get double or triple soon.
2. Keep Selling Them Time And Again:
Build a good relationship with your shoppers as they are like your advertisers who would refer highly-qualified business to your store. If they are happy, they will come back again and again for shopping at your store. Moreover, their testimonials will be the deciding factor of your reputation in the market.
3. Reactivate Your Customers:
There is no point in dedicating resources to generating new customers when your old customers can be the best source to generate more leads. So, it is important that you approach them in the right way and with the right offer. Bring back your “lost sheep” that already knows about your products and has also experienced your excellent customer service. Contacting them again and reminding them of your existence will definitely increase your sales.
4. Communicate Frequently:
If you really wish to avoid losing your customers, build a good relationship with them and stay in touch by creating a communication calendar. This is a planned set of activities like letters, phone calls, events, special offers, follow-ups, notes, cards and magic moments, that will occur automatically and continuously at pre-defined points. Your customers would not only feel happy for your efforts but also appreciate it when they see that you really value them. Just acknowledge them, keep informing them and help them in their doubts.
5. Outstanding Customer Service:
It is necessary that you should keep your customers satisfied. It’s because they will share how well you treated them and their experience with your company. Your customer support service should be extraordinary, higher than their expectations. This extraordinary support comprises of immediate response to the queries, consistent on-time delivery, no buck passing, fulfilling all commitments before and after the sale.
6. Keep Honesty with Your Products or Services:
Those who follow business ethics, they get successful in customer retention and long-term success. There should be stability in what you commit and what you do and what your customers’ experience. The design, quality, and service of your products should meet the standards that your customers expect. You can show service integrity through the way you deal with your customers and how well you handle small things.
7. Dealing with Courtesy:
You can improve interpersonal skills of your team through polite and pleasant conversation with colleagues, treating them well and without sarcasm. This will help your team feel important and they will make your customers feel the same way. They feel motivated and encouraged to deal with the customers in a warm and natural manner. This helps in creating long term bonds with your customers.
It is imperative to invest in retention tactics for your retention marketing strategy. You can hire experts or try yourself. As you develop retention strategy for your business and incorporate these tactics into it, you will definitely witness the improved ROI and more loyal customers.