What is a Customer Retention strategy?

A customer retention strategy is typically part of a long-term commitment of companies to ensure that they provide the goods and services that customers are looking for thereby reducing the number of opportunities for customers to consider switching to a different brand of product or service provider. It is important for managers and entrepreneurs to know that the customer retention process begins with the consumer’s first purchase of a product or service and continues throughout their relationship.

Using some of these tips to enhance strengthen and increase your overall performance.

1. Have a goal in your mind

Establish goal in advance to gain customer trust you need to understand the value of the customers. Nowadays, more and more consumers are aware of the effects of their consumption, so think about it and also consumers are more aware of social responsibility, companies introduce something that is important for the consumers and they care about it for better rewarding experience. This can be the cause of a dramatic increase in engagement and retention.

2. Understand your customers

Before proceeding, it is important to use the required time to know your customers and their needs. If you advise your team to have time to get to know your customers, this will be a rewarding step in your customer retention strategy. When you understand your customers and their needs, it is interesting to know how to best answer them.

3. Use positive social Proof

It has been proven that negative social proof (“Nearly 90% of sites do not use thermal mapping software!”)dissuade their consumers instead of encouraging them. Research on consumer motivation shows that positive social proof is very common and the most effective way to make people listen.

4. Do not ignore your own people

When planning your customer experience, consider the role of your own personnel in the process. The corporate culture of your company plays an important role in becoming truly customer-centric. A dedicated workforce is required to ensure a seamless customer experience.

According to Jean Bliss, founder of Customer Bliss, you have to empower your own personnel for a rewarding experience.

5. Consistently selling your product

Too many companies forget to give the customer a reason or a reminder to come back. Whatever the quality of the first sale,Never become Complacent by letting customers go and Explore the other businesses. Track sales with actions that include thanking the customer, enforcing a resale system, and promoting a reasonable sale. In business, loyalty, reference and loyal customers come from perseverance and action and this will help to sell your product consistently.

f you are interested in online business, selling through your website may be the best option. You can request email marketing from your existing customers and ask for referrals or even for increase your sales. For example, for an auto insurance company with an online business, sales increase when customers are asked to compare car insurance to choose the best option for them.

6. Use segmentation data

Since your customers can come from all walks of life, it is imperative that you do not interact with a single approach.

Using segmentation data, you can build your ideal customer profile by reducing the type of people a particular customer analyzes the following data:

  • Demographic data: information on age, gender, occupation and socio-economic status of a customer.
  • Geographical data: Information about the place of residence of the customer and the type of region in which he lives.
  • Behavioral data: Information about how a customer uses a product, their buying habits, and their propensity to be loyal.
  • Psychographic data: information about the consumers personality and lifestyle.
  • Graphical social data: information about customer behavior and interaction with social technologies.

By grouping people into these data points, you can communicate with the members of each segment with a particular offer that is certainly useful to them.

7. Use customer relationship management system for better results

As your business attracts more and more customers, it is important to track each consumer’s position in their journey and lifecycle. In return, you can provide exactly what a customer needs at the right time to go through each stage of the cycle.

Even if a company that implements CRM (customer relationship management system) will certainly benefit the company.

Customer segmentation and relationship management deliver valuable data to a business based on its customer base. However, collecting this data is only the first step in keeping your most valuable customers. That’s what you do with the data that really matters.

8. Forge a relationship with the consumers

Forget the business, the customers and entrepreneurship. Instead, Think of the strongest relationships you have in your personal life.

Now think about the relationships that you could enter or leave in your life. What are the main differences between the two?

On the one hand, your strongest relationships are real. These are not drinking buddies or softball buddies; These are your true blue friends.

While building relationships with your customers is not exactly the same as your personal life, your customers expect a certain amount of authenticity and accessibility for your business. If you do not offer these aspects, they just find a company that does.

9. Confidence with your products

exhibit your confidence with your product or service. Because showing the level of confidence while selling your product proves that you are offering the best value in your service to your customers. Customers never hold value to any product.unless the business exemplifies the confidence which becomes evident to the other users. lack of confidence shows  fruitless brand that load a lot of difficulties to retain your customers.

10. Reward your most profitable customers. Confidence with your products

The information collected in the CRM software may indicate which of your accounts have responsible for most of the revenue. This information allows you to calculate your time accordingly and allocate resources where they perform best.

Let’s say you have several incentives to give. You want to reward your most profitable customers for gaining more loyalty. By recognizing these accounts, you can also develop cross-selling strategies.

First, make a list of your most profitable customers and export this list from your CRM software. Now you can track them and share the rewards and incentives that make them feel special so they remain your most profitable customers.

11. Integrity

This could be the most essential tip of the list for companies in many sectors and industries. Retention is directly related to the long-term success achieved through the trust and integrity of the largest supporters and customers. Your product or service must demonstrate integrity by matching the words and actions you perform. The loss of integrity means that family TV characters lose their place when their actual personality does not match up. Customers are human beings and people are honest and transparent to companies that respect their own values.

There are endless ways to formulate strategies to effectively engage customers. It is important to know that there is no shortcut for companies and that they must be done in a healthy way.

12. To be authentic

There was a time when companies could subjectively testify about their products and make promises to their customers in the air while they were murdering.

These days were left behind.

Authenticity has quickly become an indispensable quality for companies that want to increase their customer loyalty. Digital Intelligence Today defines brand authenticity as “the extent to which consumers believe that a brand is loyal to itself, loyal to its customers, driven by attention and responsibility, and can help consumers be true to themselves.”

Real companies do not focus on business-to-consumer relationships. They focus on the relationships between people to whom they can offer something precious to a person. Authenticity means putting the needs, wishes, and values ​​of your customers before the sale. It also means being open and honest about your purpose.

Take, for example, TOMS shoes. The main selling point of TOMS is to help a person in need by donating shoes for each sold pair (in addition to any other TOM product sold).

Not only is it a noble company, but it also allows TOMS loyal customers to know that every time they buy new shoes, but they also make a difference in the world. And most likely, it helps to retain your customers.

But imagine what would happen if everything were revealed as a joke. The company not only loses its profit but also its loyal customers, who feel betrayed and cheated, will almost never buy a new pair of TOMS.

Fortunately, TOMS is true to its word. As the company relies on authenticity, its customers pay a little more attention each time whenever they need a new pair of shoes.

13. Supplemental material

Whether provided before or after the purchase, the additional materials can help customers understand how much business truly cares for them, not just as dollar signs, but also as people.

Before they buy, you can provide devices that help them to use their product or service. For example, if your product is a guide to healthy eating, you can offer your prospect a free booklet that describes other ways to live a healthier life (giving up, exercising, etc.).

Once a customer makes a purchase, he wants to do much more than he expects. Using the example in the previous section, you can add a comprehensive guide that focuses on one of the additional topics mentioned (eg a complete exit guide).

Delivering more than what your customers expect at every stage of your journey not only shows that they care about your success, but also consider you as a true expert in your industry.

14. Use automation to attract customers

Automation allows you to automatically manage some of your routines as software. The most popular is “Marketing Automation”.Manually monitoring and updating your customers is a slow task. Since many processes need to be repeated daily, your brand stays fresh in the customer’s memory.

In fact, there are still problems with marketing automation. The most obvious is the quality and integration of the data. The bad marketing process is also an important factor.

Automation makes you faster than your competitors. The idea here is to use automation to win back your customers. Of course, the conversion rate is increased by the manual involvement of customers. However, they can communicate more efficiently and faster through automation.

Are you committed to sending useful newsletters and text messages to new customers twice a week? Tell me: How can you do all tasks without automation?

You can choose from the top 15 marketing automation software solutions when you’re ready to improve the way you manage your relationships with your customers.

When your processes are standardized, you have the opportunity to honor your promises to customers. Automation lets you manage your customers’ contacts, send emails with news, plan promotional emails, SMS, and event notifications.

15. Choose the right platform

The best way to improve your customer service is to use the channel your customers prefer. Research has shown that the death of the support by email was greatly exaggerated. However, you must choose the channel that best suits your business otherwise you will not gain a fruitful profit.

Hosting companies, for example, know that live chat is essential when their clients’ websites collapse. Other companies may have customers who prefer self-service or even phone support. By choosing the right platform you can easily tackle the business. Better yet, you can opt for a multichannel contact center that automatically syncs interactions from diverse channels, providing seamless customer service.

16. Use customer surveys.

Surveys are powerful tools for building customer loyalty. Surveys may seem boring, but people like it. According to Fluid Survey University, “the average response rate from email surveys is 24.8%. And email surveys have several advantages. Have a look:

Listening to customers directly to see what they think of their products and services is a great way to reinforce your existing connection. Essentially, this helps you to develop attractive personalized content for customer retention.

When customers have the opportunity to express themselves, they reveal their opinions and feelings about their brand.

Be sensitive enough in your complaints to grasp the painful points. Know the areas for which they are not satisfied and why. Adapting to these areas will change things.

Be careful: Do not frown when your customers complain. Be patient enough to listen to them. Your feedback is everything you need to move from a mediocre or average business to a respected one.

Remember that with feedback, you can re-address a customer who is trying to give up your brand. The most surprising thing is that it can help you attract and retain customers (In this respect, an Enterprise contact center will also come to help).

17. Treat  customers as VIP

Dr. Nune’s additional research on loyalty programs showed that people loved to be VIP members or “gold members.” However, there is one caveat: it only works if people know that there is a class on the totem below them. In terms of human nature, Nunes saw a significant increase in gold member participation as soon as he built a money class. By Treating as Vip to the consumers They feel happy and it helps to retain your consumer. It also helps to gain the loyalty of the customers they will keep coming back. By these methods you can treat the customers as Vip

  • Make all your employees happy and welcoming with each of your guests. Your receptionist understands this, but your concierge does not. To make her client feel like a VIP, she must feel welcome by everyone she has contact with.
  • The first interaction of a customer with his salon is the booking of a service. Make sure that the booking process is as simple and easy as possible for the customer. Booking is a great opportunity to make your customers feel like a VIP. When a guest books one of his signature services, explain why this service is special or unique. Emphasize the fact that you are using an unusual technique or high-quality product.
  • Let your guests feel at home. Serve snacks, look for coffee or herbal teas while waiting for your treatment provider. Have a pitcher of ice water with lemon slices or cucumbers ready for guests. Guests feel like VIPs when they offer more than just tea and coffee.
  • Pay attention to details. All your equipment must be clean and well maintained. The shelves and the product must be dusted. Train staff at the front desk to keep the door open for older clients. Customers need to understand and be prepared for the service they require. Do not miss the little things – your customers will notice!

18. Pay attention to questions

Do you know that sometimes you need two more eyes to edit as your own typos because mistakes can not be detected? The same thing can happen to your business: you have designed the customer journey, created the product pages and set the prices. In short, you understand everything about your business because you invented it.

That’s why we cannot always see what we did wrong. At least not as good as our customers. Turning attention to questions about your business is a great way to keep your customers loyal and loyal.

For example, if someone asks a question that you think is obvious, their index may not be.

Or if you ask a question that you have already explained, you may not have explained it clearly enough.

Make sure customers feel comfortable enough to ask questions. The more comfortable they are, the more loyal they are to their customers. So listen to these questions and remember that if anyone asks, they might be the others too.

Listening is a great way to improve customer loyalty: knowing the problems you’re having is more likely to solve them.

19. Stay active in the social sphere

Always active in the social sphere

If your customers forget you, you can not keep them. And there is no better way to think about it than engage with customers on social networks.

If the social is the part of your retention. Then use it on the customer’s journey. Place social buttons in your footer, on your payment page, and on your contact page All over. There is a reason why Shopify makes it easy to add social media elements to your business:

When customers compliment you on social media then you have to thank with the friendly words and share your love with the other subscribers: this is a great customer retention strategy.

You can also improve customer loyalty by announcing new products, offers, and other updates on social networks. This is a great way to make a buzz on your social networks.

Keeping customers on social networks There are many applications that can be used to automate and optimize your participation in social networks. You can even include your social buttons in your emails.

20. Give your customers positive labels

Studies on Stanford’s choice habits have shown that people are more likely to participate in something when they have a positive trait. Buffer identifies its premium customers as “great” members and even named their updated plan as an “awesome plan,” a phrase that is much easier to accept than “paid member.”

Conclusion

Good customer retention policies can be expensive and can consume more time. The result, however, will be a base of satisfied customers returning year after year. If you’re trying to better understand your customers’ needs/wishes, use our Customer Satisfaction Survey to gauge the current level of customer satisfaction.

These are some consumers retention tips to Keep Your Customers Coming Back.

Author bio :

Jitendra Vaswani is the founder of SchemaNinja WordPress Plugin, prior to SchemaNinja he is the founder of big internet marketing blog BloggersIdeas.com. He is a successful online marketer & award-winning, digital marketing consultant. He has been featured on HuffingtonPost, BusinessWorld, YourStory, Payoneer, Lifehacker & other leading publications as a successful blogger & digital marketer. Jitendra Vaswani is also a frequent speaker & having 5+ yrs experience of in the Digital Marketing field. Check out his portfolio( jitendra.co).