12 Ways To Boost Customer Retention

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Businesses often use customer retention as a key metric to measure success over time. Indeed, repeat consumers are more likely to patronize your goods and services than new customers. On the other hand, research shows that businesses lose about 10-25% of customers yearly, making it essential to prioritize client retention as a business. Below are 12 simple ways to boost customer retention and position your business for success.

• Offer amazing customer experience

Businesses with higher customer retention rates focus on providing an unmatched customer experience. Therefore, try offering services that exceed your buyers’ expectations. Focus on customer satisfaction by giving buyers high-quality products or services. Your company must empathize with your client’s needs, so you can easily identify and understand them and provide relevant solutions.

• Design systems to measure customer value

Using the right systems will help your business effectively measure customer value. This way, you can identify gaps in your customer service and develop ways to improve and deliver exceptional value to your customer. It would be best to engage your entire business team and stakeholders to help you finetune your strategies to add value to your customers’ lives.

• Address customer complaints

Customer retention hinges on satisfaction, meaning you must pay attention to complaints. Clients not impressed with your service would unlikely want to return and do business with you. See every complaint as a small customer satisfaction survey, and ensure you use it to improve your retention rates. Ignoring feedback shows you don’t care about your clients, which may cause them to move to another business. It’s a good idea to make it easier for customers to leave complaints through emails and contact pages on your website.

• Provide a personalized customer experience

Customers have different needs, and as a business, you constantly have to meet these demands so your clients are happy with tailored offerings from your brand. Avoid offering general solutions, as that may indirectly imply that you don’t value your clients’ specific needs. According to Evergage, about 99% of marketers think personalization helps them boost their customer relationships. Providing a personalized experience will make your consumers more inclined to transact with your company.

• Stay honest

It’s important to build trust with your customers by being transparent. Many businesses get burned down because of faulty products, outrageous charges, and so on. Ensure you offer your customers an honest shopping experience with fair charges and shipping fees. Specify the shipping company you use, and don’t forget to add your tracking number. Inflating your prices will make customers think twice about choosing your business. Also, be open with your clients in your communications so they know they are dealing with a trustworthy brand. Preserving your brand integrity makes gaining customers who become your biggest brand advocates possible.

• Design a customer communication calendar

As a forward-looking business, avoid waiting for your customers to contact you with a complaint before you open the communication lines. It’s best to always keep in touch with them. Developing a customer communication calendar will help create opportunities to upsell and boost their engagement. You can also use your calendar to track customer queries. This chart can inform you about the last time a customer interacted with your business and alert you when existing buyers don’t return.

• Use a field service management software

Businesses can leverage these customer-centered applications to render exceptional customer experience and coordinate teamwork.  Adopting solutions like field service management software can help boost efficiency, fuel business growth and productivity, cut costs, and empower your team. Therefore, invest in a field service app that helps you stay on top of your orders and create an efficient workflow.

• Apologize for business mistakes

Mistakes might still happen along the way, even as you try to avoid them. Billing errors, data breaches, and other issues can throw the future of your business into doubt – depending on how you react to the situation. In one research by HubSpot, 96% of participants agreed they would remain loyal to a brand if the company took responsibility for their mistakes and corrected them. It helps to develop a plan for company errors and promptly respond to unfortunate events to position your company as proactive and not reactive.

• Differentiate your brand from your competitors

Do you want to become a market leader in your industry? You should design products that stand out. Setting your company apart from competitors is crucial to boosting customer loyalty and retention. Therefore, stay true to your identity and establish authority in your niche. If your brand is unique in its customer service, improving retention rates won’t be a problem. Remember to conduct constant research to ensure your business is always on top of issues and can identify potential gaps you can fill for your customers that your competitors may not necessarily be doing.

• Be active on social media

Retaining customers will be challenging if you allow them to forget about your business. Social media is great for engaging with current customers and generating new leads. If digital marketing is part of your sales strategies, you should stay active on social media networks ranging from Facebook to Twitter, LinkedIn, and the like.

Set up social media buttons on your website footer, checkout, and contact pages. Adding social elements to your online store greatly increases brand awareness and improves customer engagement. When customers leave positive feedback about your products or services, please share them with your social media followers as a smart customer retention strategy. You can further increase your customer retention by announcing the release of new products on your digital channels. That is an effective trick to generate buzz around your social media platforms.

• Empower your employees

Good managers don’t only lead; they empower their teams to succeed. Therefore, understand your employees’ strengths and weaknesses and support them to boost customer loyalty. Your entire company will benefit if you value your staff. Consider giving them the freedom and authority to make decisions that are in the interest of your consumers. Overall, a happy employee can better serve your business.

• Make your customers feel important

The average consumer vividly remembers how your business makes them feel. So, make sure you value, appreciate, and respect your customers. Consider tapping into the positive feelings that your products create for your consumers. Clients crave connection, so build an environment that gives them a sense of belonging. You will be amazed at how a simple “thank you” can impact your customer opinion about your brand. Avoid things that ruin your customer experience, and you will surely increase their loyalty.