Getting new customers to buy a product or pay for a service is exciting. However, more often than not, we find a small number of loyal customers in a business. Over the years, it has been crystal clear that companies have focused more on getting new customers rather than retaining existing ones. With time, this strategy which clearly involves a lot of spending could become too expensive to keep up.
Knowing how to retain customers is one of the differences between a growing and a stagnant company. But the biggest challenge for businesses is how to implement this growth strategy and where to begin.
Here are a couple of tips and tricks you can use to retain customers for your company or business.
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1. Keep in touch and encourage customer interaction
In every business setting, the producer or service provider should be the one pushing to inform customers on the business’ current situation and not the other way around. To retain your customers, you should keep them informed on your new products, product updates, promotions, review programs, and any additional information you think they should know about. This gesture should also be extended to those customers you haven’t seen or heard from in a while.
Furthermore, encourage them to interact with the information you place at their feet. You can do this by holding contests and asking them to share testimonials. Even if all these do not result in more sales of your product/service, it’ll keep your business on their minds always.
2. Use social media to your advantage
The use of social media in businesses cannot be overlooked. It not only offers you the opportunity to keep in touch with your customers but is also a platform where you can get feedback from them. Make these social media pages as fun as they can be, and occasionally show the personal touch of your business.
Videos are particularly suitable for this because they allow you show your personality. Using the right tools will help you get this right from the get-go.
Since customers frequently turn to this platform to register their complaints, convince them that your brand cares and is listening. You can also reward some of the most interactive customers to spur others to be just as dedicated to the brand.
3. Offer discounts, and a lot of them
No one turns down the chance to get an item or service for free, and nothing keeps customers more. While you don’t have to make the product or service you provide completely free, you can offer discounts that will leave them no other choice than to ignore all other brands.
Another aspect where discounts can be helpful is in keeping customers who are about to churn. To use this strategy to your advantage, you should be able to either predict the likely time frame that has an increased level of churn or has data to back up this prediction. While some products or services you render won’t have any pattern, a good number will. Once you have the timeframe figured out, you can automatically offer discounts to customers during this period.
Although it is a risky strategy, it’ll pay off if you go about it the right way. To make sure the right customers get this discount, you can set up hoops and little tasks for them before they get the discount.
4. Require a reason for cancellation and downgrades
Without customers, there is no business. So, if a lot of your customers leave regularly, you have a problem that needs to be fixed quickly. Finding out the reason this is happening is not something that can be known without the customers’ input. And if you don’t figure it out quickly, you can lose more customers in the future. Therefore, before they make a cancellation or downgrade to a lower plan in the service or product you provide, ask them for the reason why they wish to take this path.
From the mandatory response gotten from these customers, you can work to improve the service for future customers. But how does feedback from a customer that wants to downgrade or cancel block them from doing this? There are two ways this works.
The first reason is tied to their emotions. Many customers don’t know the reason they want to cancel or downgrade. By pushing for one, while convincing them of the benefits of sticking with a plan or your brand, you expose this to them. The second way in which feedback from customers helps you to retain them is that you can promise or give a timeframe to resolve the issue (that is if they have a genuine reason to leave).
In carrying out this conversational marketing strategy effectively, remember that using the right language is vital. Ensure you communicate how important it is to get the information you desire from them.
5. Provide excellent support
A lot of people don’t expect businesses to have a support system for the product or service they provide. Therefore, in a blink, they cancel their subscription, deactivate their account, and switch to the competitors the moment they experience an issue. Consequently, it’ll do you a lot of good if, from the onset, you establish that there’s a support platform to help them out if they encounter challenges when using the product or service.
On your social media pages and websites, ensure that a ‘Get Help’ icon is placed, so customers know how to go about getting the assistance they need. Also, when using this strategy, be sure to over-communicate that you have got their back and are working to resolve their issues quickly.
Conclusion
You need your customers as much as they need your product or service. But if you keep losing a customer every time you get two new ones, then your customer base isn’t really expanding. What’s worse is if your customers are leaving without new ones coming in. However, who says you can’t retain all of them while keeping them satisfied with your product?
In this blog post, we’ve highlighted five of the tips and tricks that’ll help you retain your customers, improve your customer relationship management choosing a good CRM like Salesflare, and make more profit for your brand.
