Article Contributed by Dan Razak
Regardless of what you do or sell offline and online, retaining customers should be on top of your priority list. According to the Bain & Company’s study, it’s 6-7 times more expensive for companies to acquire new clients/customers than to keep the current ones. That’s why most businesses today develop all sorts of client retention strategies to ensure their clientele’s satisfaction and engagement.
Nurturing your existing customers and stimulating them to come back and do more business with you, or recommend your brand to their friends and work associates, is probably one of the most efficient ways to grow your company in this day and age.
Even though this may be true, getting someone to become your regular and loyal client/customer is no easy task. Especially if you operate in the SaaS or marketing industry. A lot of different factors come into play here.
No matter the quality of your work, products, and services, it’s imperative to have in mind that we live in a highly competitive world where every single one of your clients is faced with an unlimited number of options.
There are literally dozens and dozens of companies out there that probably offer the same products or services as you do.
Some of them are maybe a bit cheaper, others more expensive, but nonetheless – all of them are basically threats for your business. They want to steal your clients away from you, which automatically requires that you to come up with bulletproof client/customer retention strategies that will surely keep your clients satisfied and impervious to everything that your direct or indirect competitors have to offer.
Looking back at some of the most common causes for client dissatisfaction, I have created a list of 3 crucial business elements that you need to optimize if you want to influence your client retention numbers for the better:
1. Excellent Support and Customer Experiences
Quality support plays a key role in customer/client satisfaction. It’s highly unlikely that people, regardless in which niche or industry they operate in, will continue to do business with a company that treats them poorly. Providing fair support and great customer experiences is a big deal today. According to Gartner’s predictions, more than 50 percent of today’s businesses are changing their customer experience priorities. They believe that by 2018, most currently active organizations will allocate bigger chunks of their budget to customer experience innovations. Kampyle’s study concurred that, shining the light on the fact that above 80 percent of customers believe that companies need to put more effort into providing pleasant shopper/client/customer experiences.
In their big research, the people behind Accenture found out that almost 90 percent of questioned customers get frustrated when they have to repeat their issues to different company representatives.
But what can you do to improve your user, shopper or client experiences? – Many things, actually. First and foremost, you should work on reducing the amount of effort your clients or customers need to invest in order to get to their desired answer. If you want to make sure that your clients and customers are satisfied with how you do business, make sure that you make it simple and easy for them to get what they need from you.
Make yourself and your business accessible on social media. Respond quickly to your client’s or customer’s questions through the platform that suit them best. Speed and efficiency – these are the two factors that really influence your client retention numbers for the better.
2. Impressive Reporting Game
If you work in an industry such as marketing, then you probably know that nothing influences your business like reporting. Quality client reporting plays a key role in your client satisfaction and retention game. It’s the only thing that ensures that both parties are on the same page with what has been done so far and what needs to be done in order to drive better results for your client’s business.
Even though most clients only glance at their reports, they still demand tight feedback from companies that handle their business. If your reports aren’t really good or clear enough, your clients will almost immediately take their business to some of your direct or indirect competitors. This is quite normal when you really think about, because they’re entrusting you with the faith of their business.
So, what can you do here to ensure that your reports are up to their liking?
The same thing as with everything else – find a great tool to help you optimize the process and take the quality and efficiency of this game to the next level. There are basically dozens of quality reporting utilities out there. I personally use Reportz. It suits me best. This software helps me produce amazing, detail-oriented reports in record time. Thanks to its kpi marketing dashboard, I can easily integrate all the data from my favorite tools and present them in a fashion that will surely impress my recipients, and thus – stimulate them to continue doing business with me.
3. Content Marketing
Content marketing isn’t only for reaching out to new audiences. It can be a great client and customer retention tool, if leveraged right. Everyone knows that quality content has the power to influence decisions and stimulate people to take action, so it can easily be used for building up client and customer loyalty and strengthening the relationships with people who do business with your company.
There are numerous examples of organizations that use content marketing for providing value to their clients, users, or customers. Evernote does a great job of feeding their existing users via their blog with quick tips and community stories, designed specifically to get their clientele to use the app more frequently. Evernote’s blog is basically there to help the user better understand their software, and thus – become more dependent on it.
The goal here is to deliver useful and entertaining content that keeps the value of your brand, products, and services, constantly in front of the mind of your users, clients, or customers. If you do a good job of demonstrating your expertise, worth, and overall importance in the industry – people won’t have the need to look for additional solutions online.
About the Author
Dan Radak is a marketing professional with eleven years of experience. He is a coauthor on several websites and regular contributor to BizzMark Blog. Currently, he is working with a number of companies in the field of digital marketing, closely collaborating with a couple of e-commerce companies.