8 Min
Customer retention forever has been known to be more reliable than customer acquisition in business world. Well, we won’t dispute that fact.
Here’s an eye juggler for you:
While each business is building its brand presence online, the new and smaller businesses or start-ups are worst hit with digitization costs. And the answer to your why is not just brand’s age in the market; it also is acquiring metrics like CTR, UV, AST, etc.
Small businesses today often spend as high as $100 on campaigning for advertisements with just a couple of clicks.
Juggled yet?
This is the exact reason why you should deviate your focus from gaining new leads towards maintaining a steady communication with the existing leads. A great range of communication channels is available at your disposal to choose from depending on your products and on the best preferred channels by your customers. Capturing all such algorithms might not be an easy crack for you but here we present 5 best ways to keep in touch and how shall they benefit you…
Before diving in, let us get clear on what exactly is customer retention and how is it determined?
Table of contents
Q: What is customer retention?
A: Customer retention is a set of strategies used by an organization to keep a track of its customer-relation activities and responses received thereafter. Customer retention thus helps you to extract insights from their responses and feedback. The strategies are derived from a long and regular study of customer behavior, purchase pattern, market mentality, fashion drift, survey responses, social media reactions, product/services consumption, etc.
These results are used to deliver better customer experience and build a solid foundation for long term relations and earn a strong place in the market niche.
Q: How to determine your customer retention rates?
A:
- Repeat customer rate
- Purchase frequency
- Average Order Value (AOV)
The above mentioned metrics are used to calculate the elephant in the room i.e. customer journey mapping. We will now see how:
Repeat customer rate
As the name says, this metric takes into consideration only those customers who came back to you for a second purchase of your commodity or for extension/renewal of service validity. It can be accurately measured only by keeping a count of unique customers or the customers who develop brand loyalty for you. They shall make repeated purchases from you, recommend you in their fellow groups, and promote you consciously or unconsciously via word-of-mouth publicity, social media handles, and positive reviews.
Purchase frequency
Purchase frequency can be calculated for your unique customers too and also for your scattered customers. It basically projects the frequency of sales made. This helps in locating if or not the revenue being generated is hitting higher than the investments done. Purchase frequency is directly proportional to the profit, thus the success of an organization. Higher frequency points out towards the higher conversion rate of your potential leads into current customers. These leads can be made constant through smart advertisements, marketing, sales pitch, and by overall bridging any gaps in the communication stream.
Average order value
Attaining big orders to the extent that the organization touches the peak of demand surpassing supply is the dream of every entrepreneur. However, it cannot be carved into reality with only high sales volumes. This must essentially include an increasing trend of average order value or the average value of units placed per order. It indicated the monetary value a customer is ready to invest with your organization at one particular time period. Since money is the primary factor in all corporate activities; bigger the chunk, better are the chances of earning lion’s share in the market.
Best customer retention practices & their benefits
Strengthen communication thread
The communication between the organization and the customers should be continuous and all demands put forward by them must be reasonably met. Customers often tend to go out of the way and expect the impossible but a customer can be retained only when they are lead to believe that their association with organization is one to be cherished with pride and the denial being out forward is humble and essential.
Benefit delivered
Communication is a healthy way of expression for both organization as well as the customer to come on common grounds for service provision. When customers would feel heard, they would feel valued and taken care of thereby giving good ratings in terms of CSAT, CX, CS, and customer journey.
Improve customer service quality
The customer service quality expressed by people on the receiving end is always lower than the projections put forward by the company representatives. The only solution to this is to deploy better techniques and match the demands put forward constantly. It is also essential to monitor competitors’ strategies and industry trends. You might even look for ways to sweeten the deal for your customers by offering gifts. Merchandise like custom t-shirts or vouchers for free shipping are worth a shout.
Benefit delivered
Improved service qualities include consistency of knowledge base and continuance in the resolution procedure even if the customer has to go through a break in the process. This takes place through a log of all interactions making it easy for even the new assistance aid to pick up from exact point where it was earlier left reducing wait time, call wrap time, & improving FCR and AHT.
Engage customers with mailers and campaigns
Keeping a constant touch with the customers is important to retain them as a regular part of the organization. A good old technique is to keep them engaged with messages that deliver a personal touch. It can be easily done via app notifications, mailer campaigns, vouchers, and other engagement activities. In addition, it is crucial to ensure that customers can easily find and access the information they’re looking for on a company’s website. One way to achieve this is by targeting relevant keywords and optimizing the content for search intent. By doing so, customers will continue finding value in the website and are more likely to return for future purchases or interactions.
Benefit delivered
Mailers are official documentation of the communication and response thereto. It helps to map out the sect of the market that is generating returns and needs more attention over others. There is nothing as beneficial as real time data and statistics for SMEs, and digital and CX heads to brainstorm together and derives actionable insights live.
Use CTAs to gather leads and promote sales
The CTAs are a very strategic part of the customer retention scheme. The placement of CTA buttons should be bold yet subtle. It should draw attention but should not hurl the customer into ill advised action. The CTA thus, must welcome the user on the platform and work a mini push towards encouraging a visitor to convert into a lead and thus be a part of future sales revenue.
Benefit delivered
Each time a CTA button is clicked and a form is filled or an attachment is downloaded, it opens a door of opportunities. This however requires filtration with fine tooth comb. CTA placements thus help establish a visual hierarchy and a good placement indeed gives the hosting brand an upper hand to engage the onlookers and negotiate with them to crack a deal or read audience thoughts through their reactions and responses.
Collect feedback & highlight USP
Collecting feedback through surveys, feedback forms, comments, ratings, social media behavior, and community platforms is essential to give the team a look at what goes on in customer’s minds. A customer would prefer to remain attached only if the organization has a USP as key differentiator and is keeping up with innovation.
Benefit delivered
Apart from calls, targets, numbers, and scores for inbound calls, a lesser known aspect for call center agents is also to get sales revenues through brand outreach and outbound calls. Introducing your brand and product, however, is not going to crack it up in the first 5-10 seconds which is why every organization should aim at promoting their USP and key highlights with each interaction to get as many ears as possible to hear about their brand.
