How your business can better retain customers.
Is CRM part of your customer retention strategy?
Customer retention is a key part of every business strategy. Repeat customers and referrals greatly affect the bottom line. Things like poor customer service, bad customer engagement, and too little forethought into what matters to customer are all ways to ensure that your business doesn’t retain its customer base. So, what can you do to ensure that your customers stay engaged and consistent buyers? Here are some customer retention strategies to consider in your overall business plan.
Remember the Relationship
One of the key parts of customer retention management is maintaining the relationship that you’ve established. Once a prospect converts to a customer, you are in a different kind of relationship. All pre-customer marketing efforts are based on growing brand awareness and positioning your organization as a solution to a problem customer has. Once a customer has converted, the relationship shifts. You still need to position yourself a solution to that client, but now the effort that goes into maintaining that is more focused – you can now use what you know about that customer (what you sold, their role at their business, their budget, etc.) to help keep that relationship going.
Use CRM
CRM – or Customer Relationship Management– systems are one of the best ways to keep customers. Not only can they help you track customer journey steps and points of engagement along the way to purchase, they can target customers after a purchase with offers, emails, and other communications that are hyper relevant to these customers. Regular, personalized interactions help customers see a business as more than just a place to spend their dollars, but also a resource or partner in their journey.
Enlist Other Departments
CRM programs are a powerful resource, and you can double their impact by combining your sales team with the power of marketing professionals. CRM can help to identify who to target and what kind of information they might benefit from; marketing teams can help create the best content and images to resonate with that client in that moment of their customer journey.
Understand the Benefits
It might be hard to understand why if you’ve already acquired a customer why you’d have to continue spending time, money, and effort into that relationship, but customers are most likely to leave a relationship with a business and never buy again if they don’t believe that business cares about them. You can increase profits and decrease marketing costs with a well-run customer retention program and the capability of CRM programs. Not paying attention to your customer base can end up costing you in the long run.
Customers who have already bought with your company are more likely than others to buy again. They already know the value of your brand and are more likely to invest with you again if they believe that you are invested in them too. Have CRM systems and other customer retention plans helped you continue relationships with customers, build profits, and contribute to your bottom line? What are the biggest benefits for businesses who deploy CRM programs? What are other customer retention strategies you’d add to this list?
