Customer Retention Strategies That Still Work

Are you confused about how to retain your old customers? Well, read along to learn some interesting techniques that will help you out.

Introduction

In simple words, customer retention is a brand’s ability to keep its customers long-term and generate revenue from them. You may ask, why is customer retention important? Customer retention plays an important role in boosting your profits along with improving your brand’s value over time. For a strong business, retaining old customers along with gaining new customers is important. Implementing customer retaining techniques into business eventually leads to greater ROI.

Customer Retention Strategies for 2022

Here are a few such strategies and customer retention strategies examples that have helped many companies:

1. Experience is Everything! 

Providing a good experience can do wonders for your business. Start with providing a good experience to your customers.  

Consider the example of Amazon, an e-commerce-based company. For them retaining customers became important due to the extensive competition in the market. The reason behind the growth of Amazon is the way it has given importance to user experience.

2. A Gap Between You and Your Competitors

Eliminating the competition and providing better service/products that hit right on a customer pain point is a good reason for customers to stay committed to your company and help improve sales. 

A good example that fits here is Apple. They have developed products that stand out from the rest and have become an obvious choice for many people. Campaigns like ‘Mac vs. PC’ or ‘Smartphone vs. iPhone’ has made the company’s customers their brand advocates.

3. Brand Community: An Invisible Army

Building a community around your product lets the customer stay in touch with you. They form a strong base of loyal customers who stand with the company when needed.

The best example that fits here is the OnePlus. OnePlus has built a strong community regarding its products, which has helped them gain proper consumer feedback and garner consumer loyalty.

4. Rewards: A Tempting Offer

There is nothing better than a sweet reward after purchase, and this leaves behind a good impression in the customer’s mind. Companies like Flipkart and Uber provide additional rewards and discounts to their loyal customers, thus retaining a good chunk of existing customers.

Levels of Customer Retention Strategies

1. Financial Retention 

Here the customer is retained with the company for financial incentives. The company benefits existing customers through financial means like special discounts, discount coupons, etc.

2. Retention Through Social Means

The customer is attached to the company through financial incentives but also through some social bonds. We get to see these types of bonds in companies that provide professional services like consultants, lawyers, accountants, etc.

3. Retention Through Flexibility in the Service

The customer is tied to the company not just through financial or social means but also by providing tailored services. This mostly works by providing one-to-one solutions to the client and taking care of the individual customer.

4. Structural Retention

It involves the retention of clients by providing services that are perfectly designed for the client.

Such services are highly customized for the customer, and they infuse a greater value to the client by increasing their productivity. For example, a delivery company that works closely with a hospital can increase the productivity of the hospital by supplying and delivering medical aid according to the need of the hospital. Thus, the hospital must be tied with a specific delivery service to maintain its efficiency.

Customer Retention Strategies in CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

CRM is a useful tool for implementing customer retention strategies. It contains a good amount of data about your customers and how they interact with your business.

Here are some retention strategies that can be implemented using CRM : 

1. Make Your Product the Best

CRM data helps you build and improve your product according to your customers’ needs.

A good example of this is how Santa Cruz Bicycles analyzed the responses of their riders through CRM and implemented it in their bicycles.

2. Product According to Their Needs.

You can study your company’s CRM data and provide services/products to your customers that suit them best. This helps in developing trust among the customers towards the company.

3. Convenience 

CRM combined with advanced technology can provide a good and convenient experience to your customers, encouraging them to opt for you and not your competitors.

4. Speak to Your Customers

Speaking to customers on a one-to-one basis is an important part of CRM as well as a good strategy for customer retention. This shows how a company values the customers’ opinions.

This can help you set up your company’s key performance indicators.

Customer Retention Strategies for Small Business

For a small business, a loyal customer base is the most important source of marketing and sales. Thus retention strategies play a key role in transforming a small business into a big business. 

 Here are some strategies that can be followed if you are a part of a small to mid-sized business.

1. Customer Service

The thing that encourages a customer to repeat a purchase is their experience when they purchase something from you. Your onboarding experience is what matters in creating a good impression on the consumer. So, make sure everything goes on smoothly here.

2. Trust Is the Key

Don’t assume that if your customers buy from you, they will always be loyal to you. Trust takes time to build and can only be done by providing good customer service, as discussed above, and by consistently delivering value to the customers.

Following the brand promises and standing on your words will positively impact your customers and eventually lead them to your doorstep again.

3. Feedback – A Mirror 

You need to improve your business according to your customers’ needs constantly. You can never improve if you don’t know how your customers feel about your product, and this is where customer feedback kicks in. 

You can collect customer feedback by conducting surveys at the end of the purchase. Once you have collected the feedback, you can analyze them to get info about customer behavior and other aspects where your company can improve the consumer experience.

4. Providing Out-of-the-box Services

Standing out of the crowd is a good way of keeping the customers interested in your company. Delivering a product/service superior to your competitors leaves no option open for customers other than you. Further, it helps in increasing the customer retention rate for your company.

Conclusion

If you want to take your business up to the mark, then the above-mentioned customer retention strategies will provide you with a helping hand. All these are small things yet very effective in growing a business as well as maintaining the sales of well-grown businesses. These techniques will not just help you in customer retention but also in customer acquisition. One of the unique customer retention strategies is to deploy a live chat platform on your web-based platform for your customers. Skylink Cube is free for trial and basic usage, and paid plans cost as low as $1 a day.