4 EFFECTIVE CUSTOMER RETENTION STRATEGIES FOR SMALL BUSINESS
What Are Customer Retention Strategies?
“Customer is king” is a philosophy that most businesses keep in mind when developing their marketing strategies. Whether your business is small or large, valuing your customers and their needs and requirements is one of the most important factors of driving growth. Especially for small businesses who have just set out to achieve their desired goals and make a mark, it is extremely essential for them to understand the value of a good customer retention strategies.
But, there are many organizations who believe that the best way to grow is to acquire more and more clients over a short period of time. While that may be true for brands who already have a dedicated and loyal customer base, it is a well-known fact that it is 6-7 times more expensive to acquire a customer than to retain a current customer.
Importance Of Customer Retention Strategies
Retaining customers is not just beneficial when it comes to driving revenue for the business. But it also helps in boosting loyalty and attracting more customers in the long run. Statistics also show that old customers are likely to spend more on a brand’s products and services than new customers. This clearly shows that customer retention is one area that brands need to focus as it measures the impact of their services. Let us show you 4 customer retention strategies that can help you elevate the marketing approach of your small business.
How to improve customer Retention rate?
Extend unique services
It is widely known that the market today is highly competitive, more than it has ever been. With more and more brands and products proliferating the business landscape, it has become equally difficult to differentiate your value from that of your competitors. This is where customer retention acts as an important tool as one mistake in customer experience can lead them to your competitors. So whether it is automating your customer service with the help of a WhatsApp chatbot or removing an obstruction in workflow, add value to the lives of your customers in any way that you can.
Focus on customer feedback
It becomes challenging to improve a business when you don’t know what’s wrong or inadequate in its structure in the first place. All customers have a certain set of expectations from the brands they are associated with. And one of the best ways marketers can learn those is through customer feedback surveys.
Feedbacks help firms to understand their customers better and analyse their preferences and expectations in greater detail. It can enable marketers to identify satisfied and dissatisfied customers, any defects in their products or services, plan customer retention strategies and figure out the way forward towards growth.
Customer communication schedule
Every business communicates with their customers, either online or offline. But not many businesses communicate effectively that has a long-lasting impact on their audience. One of the ways in which small businesses can ensure customer retention is by creating a communication calendar for their customers. A communication calendar is a chart that tracks customer interactions effectively.
If your customers are not reaching you or providing feedback on their own, then you can proactively reach out to them yourself. The communication chart can help you send promotional messages, notifications and reminders on routine intervals to keep business-customer interaction intact. For example, if a customer’s subscription to your emails is expiring soon, you can send them a reminder to subscribe ahead of time.
Track customer service KPIs
While feedback and unique services are useful tools in enhancing customer service, tracking the effects of such techniques always plays an important role. Your current customers are looking for value. And you can only provide that form of value with an elevated and unmatchable customer experience. To complement soft strategies, businesses also need to track the key performance indicators of their customer service strategies in order to get optimal results.
There are various metrics with the help of which your small business can monitor its customer support success. One of the best methods to learn whether your marketing efforts are paying off is CSAT or Customer Satisfaction Score. This customer loyalty metric is computed by the means of online surveys or live chats that determines whether the customers feel their expectations from the company’s services have been met. A higher CSAT score indicates a higher level of customer satisfaction and is in short, good news for your customer service support team.
To sum up
As long as you are keeping your customers needs and preferences in mind, they will be happy to return and purchase from you. But in order to build such credibility, brands need to establish a factor of trust with their target audience. Small businesses, in particular, may not always have a big budget to spend on advertising campaigns. In this case, a good and trustworthy rapport with their customers is the best way to ensure business growth and success.
It’s not always the big gestures that get your business more customers. Sometimes, it is simple things such as listening to your customers or enhancing their overall experience with your brand that gives them a reason to stay loyal to you. That’s what customer retention is all about.