7 Customer retention techniques – How to retain your high-value customers
Customer retention always remains a key focal point for brands. In the current business environment retaining customer has become a tedious task.
However, many companies do not realize the importance of customer retention. Their focus is more towards customer acquisition. Often not giving required attention towards their current and loyal customers.
Customers today are left with ample choice as per their demand. Hence, a continuing customer relationship is essential for business sustainability today.
7 Customer Retention Techniques
Few of the key customer retention techniques to retain valuable customers are as follows:
Evolve your Product Offering
Variety in the product offering is a prerequisite for brands to stand out in today’s crowded market place. Brands must continuously engage with the customers by providing them with relevant and updated products.
Personalization along with variety in product offering helps in delighting customers. Treat your customers with a gesture like providing exclusive deals etc. It triggers them to continue purchasing your products and not shift to your competitors.
For example, Souq.com does it very well. They have a wide variety of product categories for all audience groups. Their recommendation engine is the win here.
It identifies your browsing habits and purchase behavior and curates a list of items that will interest you. The customer would receive it via email, display ads, etc. Doing so excites the customer and urges them to shop more with Souq.com.
Conduct Customer Research
Periodic customer surveys and existing customer data will have important insights about your customers.
Constantly monitor their user behavior. Track customer usage patterns, shopping history, past transactions, etc. Offer solutions that satisfy their unmet needs.
Understanding their current level of satisfaction, requirements and pain points will lead to devising a robust customer retention strategy.
It is evident that the cost of acquiring a new customer is more than servicing your existing customer. Hence brands must always be focused to retain their loyal customers.
The most critical aspect of customer retention is to listen to customer feedback and act to resolve them. Brand who have leveraged this simple technique has won the game.
Build a Customer Community
For a brand, loyal customers are a great communication channel. Create a customer community. Encourage them to speak about your brand in social media, trade events, contribute to content and act as referrals, etc.
Engage the loyal customers by providing them with exclusive offers. keep them well informed about your product features and quality.
Create Content for your Existing Customers
Tailor your content to suit the requirements of your existing customers. Customer preferences and buying habits are evolving very fast in today’s world.
Hence, brands must always be updating their customers with compelling content that is relevant to their current stages of purchase. It triggers customer delight, and there is a high chance the customer will continue buying from the brand.
Organization Alignment
All teams of your organization must align to the goal of retaining more customers. A customer might interact with various business units during their purchase journey. During the consideration stage, they might interact with the sales and post-purchase with the services team.
Customer Service is the most -tricky part of customer retention. Provide instant answers to customer queries to up your customer service game.
Train the customer service agents to maintain cool. Resolve maximum complaints at the first interaction itself. It results in increased retention rates.
Hearing customer complaints is very critical. A brand responding positively to a complaint is likely to turn the customer into an advocate for the brand.
Use of Analytics
Leverage the power of analytics to identify the customer drop-offs/ inactive status and churn rates.
Trigger reminder emails with informative collateral to bring the customer back. Check whether they are responding to the free offers, coupons, free trails and complimentary offers provided by your brand.
If no, change your marketing strategy.
Measuring churn rates are important. Measure how many customers are leaving you for your competitors. It is a key metric to measure to know your current status.
Machine learning and Artificial intelligence is the next big thing in customer retention analytics.
“Only 15% of senior leaders use customer data consistently to inform business decisions” – Forrester.
By plugging in analytics with the customer retention goal, create a more structured customer base. It helps in classifying customers into value-based tiers and streamline retention activities accordingly.
Customer Win-back Program
Targeting all your lost customers through a win-back campaign is an effective technique.
Customer feedback, open sessions, free consultations, etc., would help in knowing the actual reasons for the drop-offs. Offering alternate solutions that could be of use to your lost customers is likely to bring them back.
Email marketing and personalized push notifications are the best means to win back programs. Use customer data to pinpoint the reasons for unsubscribes/ uninstalls. Send personalized reminder emails with incentives, feedback, benefit-focused communication, etc.
One important thing to focus on while launching win back programs is do not overdo it and annoy customers. Know when to quit your marketing communications with your dormant customers.
The above-listed retention techniques would help brands to keep their customers intact. It also helps in providing the required services at the right time. Thereby, delighting them and increase customer satisfaction.
Looking for framing a robust customer retention strategy for your brand? Talk to the strategic experts!