Last Updated on October 30, 2018 by Jessica Adams
Through a great selling proposition, clear messaging, well-targeted marketing, and well-designed website, you’d think you’d have zero trouble with winning new customers over. So why is it that you can’t customers to come back to your site?
Just as important as gaining a new customer, it’s crucial to keep the returning customers from falling through the cracks. Those are the people who are going to talk about their multiple (hopefully positive) experiences with your business.
Here, we’re going to look at the issue of customer retention. Then we’ll look at how to increase that retention rate, and how you’ll benefit when you do.
How to Stop Customers From
Falling Through The Cracks
Make Customer Success a Priority
There are different elements that truly contribute to customer success. Offering them support to help them address any concerns or problems is a big part of it, but it’s not all of it, as Medium tells it. You should carry out the practices of learning whether or not your product or service managed to actually solve their problem. This might mean investing in higher quality products or new services, but if you’re losing most of your customers, it might be just what you need.
Track Them Through Every Step of Their Journey
How do you learn whether they’re seeing that success? You have to gain as much insight on them as possible. This is how teams like WhiteOwl can help. Customer relationship management not only helps you keep more data on your customers, but it tracks them throughout the customer life-cycle.
From the first purchase to any problems they have had or whether they have signed up for your email or not. You can create metrics to see where you’re losing most of your customers, which helps you figure out where you need to put a little more effort and thought in improving your practices.
Foster a Real Relationship
Customers are more likely to keep coming back when they feel like they have a personal relationship with the business. There are many ways to do that. First of all, adding little touches like thank you notes with deliveries or personally written emails instead of copy-pasted messages is a big help.
Engaging with your community more often on social media can make a difference, as well. Above all else, show that you’re listening to their concerns and needs and respond specifically. Being heard is hard as a consumer, and if you show that you’re listening, it immediately raises your reputation.
Offer Incentives to Stick Around
There’s nothing wrong with sweetening the deal. However, as Marketing Week shows, loyalty programs are changing the kind of incentives they offer. Rather than offering discounts based on how much they spend, they are instead encouraging more engagement and more repeat purchases, even if they are smaller.
Otherwise, you’re not really incentivizing loyalty, you’re incentivizing big, one-time splurges. Referral systems work to incentivize not just loyalty but word-of-mouth, too.
Why should you focus a little more on decreasing customer churn and a little less than customer gain? Simply put, it’s cheaper. By investing internally on customer support and finding the gaps in your system, you save the money that would otherwise be spent on advertising. You also make just as much in return if not more. After all, repeat customers are likely to come back more than just once.
Edited by Jessica Adams
No Comments