Reading Time: 8 minutes

Brands work hard to lure customers through a mix of your marketing strategies. They invest a lot of time and effort and money in achieving their customers’ trust and confidence. It only makes sense that they hold them tight.

That’s where customer retention is emphasized. To improve customer retention, brands have to look at their entire customer experience. 

CX involves everything that a customer thinks and feels when they encounter brands. Customer-facing interactions are very essential, such as customer support, query resolution, or how brands communicate their values, which are a few factors that affect a buyer-brand relationship.

Creating a seamless experience that makes customers happy every step of the way can keep them hooked to your brand. You might lose your customers if you fall short of fulfilling their expectations or by not understand their needs and wants.

The importance of customer retention will rely on how the customer has been treated. Once a client is onboarding it becomes imperative for the customer success team to keep the client 

Updated with every new feature, 55% of the SaaS companies say customer retention is the key metric and existing customer is where the big-spending happens, the chances of selling to a new prospect is 5 to 20% and on the other hand with an existing customer, it is 60 to 70% The bread and butter of all SaaS companies are the recurring payments, and without a good client base, it is difficult to nurture for the long term plan, a business model which puts the need of the customer on top priority gets a good return. 

Customer RETENTION

So customer retention is completely different from customer acquisition or lead generation as customer acquisition is a more pricey decision for brands than customer retention. It focuses on customers who have already purchased products.

Customer retention is where the brands turn their customers into repeat buyers and prevent them from jumping to their competitors. It also displays whether brands deliver quality products or services. 

To improve customer lifetime value and trust and loyalty brands initiate customer retention strategies and programs. It also builds customer relationships as customers are more inclined towards authentic brands, value offering, and reliability.

But why CUSTOMER RETENTION is important?

Keeping a hold on your existing customers happy is a more cost-effective solution than acquiring a new one.

Acquiring a new customer is anywhere from five to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one. – Havard Business Review.

Brands have to set budgets for marketing, advertising, sales, and more. As your existing customers trust you, it’s easier to retain them as they won’t give up repeat business.

Brand loyal customers are brand advocates who recommend your products and services to their family and friends through word of mouth or social media channels. To gain long-term success and customer loyalty brands should work on strategies and create a buzz through marketing to retain their loyal customers.

How is the customer treated from day one? 

Believe it or not, whether customers buy groceries or buy a car if they feel not cared, they might not stick for a long time, the onboarding process needs to be simple and concise, and how well we have designed the walkthrough, will certainly make it interesting from the start. It may be an annual subscription or a week’s trial connecting with them on the first day and week is very crucial.

Measuring Customer RETENTION

Make meaningful personal interactions that are engaging, convincing, and rewarding for customers, they’ll be more faithful to the brand in return.

➡️  Periodic Webinars 

Interactive webinars build trust among all users. The working relationship benefits both the parties; it is not the sharing of new features, rapport gets built too. Unlike many industries, boosting sales is not the only way; we need interactive sessions that webinars offer also the joiners can get immediate answers on a live session. Above all the content of the live session should leverage the value most effectively.

➡️ Customer lifetime value (CLV)

For a business to understand which customer will stay till the end, clv signifies a customer’s value over time.

The CLV formula = Simple CLV annual revenue per customer Multiplied by customers relationship in years. 

➡️  First Call Resolution= FCR 

For a business to run smoothly it is highly needed all the queries get answered at the first call itself, meaning the same customer should not repeat the questions for the second time. This is depended on how your customer success team is dealing with the clients, are they equipped with all the necessary details, are calls getting converted for an escalation for no reason,  according to reports a good FCR rate lies between 41- 94%.

Here is the formula for FCR –

FCR = Total number of calls resolved on first attempt / Total number of calls received

➡️  Offer Self-help 

The best way to help customers is by making them navigate on their own, with the help of videos, and on-call assistance, clients can start using products or services at the earliest.

Here are some self-help tips –

1. FAQs are essential so that they don’t have to call or chat about inane issues 
2. A detailed tutorial and knowledge base which they can go through 
3. The standard operating procedure can be of huge help for a new visitor
4. These pointers are tantamount and also huge drivers for customer retention 

➡️ Taking Feedback on time 

Understanding where a product needs improvement can be the center point for customer satisfaction, with timely feedback – we can always gauge the issue and get it fixed.

For an instance, if a few clients repeatedly tell us the onboarding is too much information and tiring, ensuring we change the format should be the best practice, even if it’s an innocuous complaint we better get it out from the customer and implement the change.

➡️  Use Content to keep the Clients busy 

Posting relevant blogs and podcast is an excellent practice. With repeat, social media post the engagement rates increases, and more chances for staying connected with existing clients, posting helpful content builds trust and in addition, we can also do a call to action within your content to drive readers back to your tool.

Also, from a marketing perspective, a company that is on its toes concerning social media never goes out of business with the kind of value they bring with each engagement. 

➡️  Building Community 

A product-focused company will ensure the users share their experience with other communities. Word of mouth is very effective because it is coming from someone you know and believing someone who is using the tool is much more reliable than a salesperson pitching to meet his target.

Tips of a better community in person around your product 

1) Distributing newsletter periodically 

2) Host a virtual in-person meet 

3) Distribute product goodies encourage users to share on social media 

Strategies to improve CUSTOMER RETENTION

Enhancing customer service is improving customer experience which leads to customer retention. Leverage your positive word of mouth as they can bring in their friends and family to become new customers for your company and divert budgets to the retention program.

Research done by Frederick Reichheld of Bain & Company shows increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%. – Havard Business Review.

Consider customers you want to serve up-front and concentrate on reaching and acquiring the right customers. The objective of the brand goal is to bring in and keep customers to who you can provide value and who are valuable to you. Managing customer retention is an immensely vital aspect of growing a sustainable business or brand.

➡️  Leverage customer surveys

The best way to determine what your customers think and feel about your brand is to simply ask them. Collecting feedback using surveys and analyzing potential dissatisfaction is a significant point to understand what needs to be improved in your overall online experience.

Customers appreciate it when brands take this step to ask them for their opinion. It means they care and that they’re ready to go that extra mile to keep them. It also helps them to understand customers’ perceptions and sentiments towards your brand.

➡️  Educate your customers

There are a lot of different ways to train new customers on how to use your product and  It’s crucial to offer resources that make it easy for new customers to learn.

Offer onboarding content with tutorials for better understanding. Send emails specially designed for new customers. Provide training sessions to make them feel important and cared for. 

➡️  Connect with your consumers

Constantly communicating with consumers through their preferred channel of communication is the key to online customer retention. Today, there are over 4 billion email users worldwide, and even though social media is a very widespread and favored channel of communication, email is still customers’ preferred communication tool.

Nevertheless, wherever you communicate with your customers, it’s important to be uniform and consistent and use a personalization strategy whenever possible for spot-on relevance.

➡️  Offer and utilize personalization

Brands’ success depends on the ability to offer a unique, personalized customer journey. Customers would be glad to share relevant information about themselves if they’re immediately known and understood.

Getting customers to create an account is a terrific way to know more about them. Always offer a personalized customer experience that encourages purchases from your brand. Another straightforward way of personalization is utilizing product recommendations based on customers’ behavior.

➡️  Provide quick services policies – fast delivery & easy returns

So when it comes to the eCommerce industry, delivery of the products and easy return policy are two of the biggest consumer concerns. Managing the last-mile delivery can support you to stand out from the competition and have a hold on your customers.

However, there are circumstances where customers want to return the product and sometimes replace the product. Streamlining simplification in this process will deliver peace of mind to your customers and also encourage them to come back and make repeat purchases from your online store.

➡️  Identify different ways to delight your customers consistently

Discounts and freebies are a fantastic but pricey way to provide a satisfying experience to your customers. Instead of relying too heavily on these offers, brands should embrace thoughtful gestures.

Psychologist Norbert Schwarz, at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, says mere moods often determine a person’s overall satisfaction with their life. And, he also adds, “Very minimal things can temporarily put you in a good mood,” and thus brighten everything else.

Something as little as 10 bucks can create reciprocity and it’s the thought that counts. It makes customers feel that the brand cares, listens, and understands them.

Conclusion

To ensure customer retention the product journey should be frictionless and easy to understand. The onboarding decides the major metrics of customer retention, the minute the customer logs in without referring to the knowledge base should be able to do the key task. As they gradually learn how to use it creates a good impression for the company, when they have to look at a long video, we can provide short videos of 15- 30 seconds, so they can understand and retain the content.

To ensure clients’ needs are met and bridge the gap by communicating effectively.

These are the key metrics for client retention. Brand loyalty is not built overnight, use your customer’s experience to improve on your customer retention strategies. It takes time and effort to grow meaningful relationships with your customers and earn their convictions.

Tags: customer experience, Customer Journey, Customer Loyalty, Customer Retention, Customer Satisfaction