7 Tips To Improve Customer Retention

It is said that acquiring a new customer is almost 16 times more expensive than retaining an existing one to whom you can cross-sell and up-sell. According to a survey by SAS and Loyalty360, 68% of the business comes from existing clients. This makes customer retention incredibly important to sustain and grow. However, with customer expectations at all-time highs and brand loyalty at risk from competition, businesses must come up with new strategies to keep their valuable customers coming back.

​1. Identify High-Value Customers

It is of utmost importance to offer great user experience to all customers. However, certain clients are not just frequent buyers but also advocates of your brand — these are the ones who deserve special treatment as they play a major role in growing your business. CRM enables your sales team to build a profile for existing and potential clients, which can be added to in order to provide a more robust picture of each individual. With this knowledge in hand, it is easier for your sales team to identify high-value customers and services that you can offer.

​2. Create a System for Complaints

A complaint is an "expression of dissatisfaction made to an organisation, related to its products, or the complaints handling process itself, where a response or resolution is explicitly or implicitly expected." It is important to create a system that can track complaints and advance those where they are identified and tackled effectively — accessible at any point from anywhere. An effective complaint handling system resolves issues raised by dissatisfied customers in a timely and cost-effective way while providing information that leads to improvements in service delivery.

​3. Reducing Response Time for Customer Queries

Capture customer complaints received through calls, emails, website, and self-service portals, making them available in a single platform for your support service operations. Through CRM you can communicate that you appreciate queries and constantly work towards reducing response time. Reducing response time and strengthening your support team is likely to result in higher customer engagement.

​4. Keep Customers Updated and Informed

"Many times, consumers do not complain, but instead take actions such as switching brands or engaging in negative word of mouth." Such situations can be easily controlled if you keep your team and customers updated and informed. CRM mobile applications offer critical information on the spot — inventory availability, current pricing models, and any other information your team or client may need, in real time.

​5. Customers Enjoy Businesses Who Know Them

Once you have a customer base, it is important to sync your understanding at an individual level. Each customer, though similar in nature of sector, may require a different approach or service. To achieve this you need consolidated data in a single repository and engagement at the digital level through social listening, which may be feedback, queries, or leads.

​6. Build Trust through Relationships

According to a Concerto Marketing Group and Research Now Survey, when customers trust a brand, 83% will recommend a trusted company to others and 82% will continue to use that brand frequently. The three principals of building trust through relationship are: Service, Consistency, and Transparency.

​7. Give Customers Something Your Competitors Don't

Having a competitive advantage is the need of the hour. CRM believes in coming up with ideas that are ahead of time and help you get the first-mover advantage to ensure that your customers are delighted every now and then. Our Marketing, Sales, Mobile and Support CRM applications have been designed to keep you updated with real-time market scenarios, enabling you to take care of marketing dynamics.