You have probably heard it many times- it is always cheaper for a company to entice existing customers to purchase more products than to acquire new ones. It is the case for most businesses, especially in the e-commerce world, where conversions and clicks are ever-increasing in cost. Customer retention is known as the activity companies utilize to increase repeat purchases from existing customers to increase profits. Customer retention strategies allow businesses to extract and provide more value from their existing customer list. They do such a thing to ensure that the customer they worked so hard to acquire stays with them. They strive to ensure the customer continues to purchase their products and have an outstanding customer experience. In short, a retention strategy promotes relationship building while an acquisition strategy brings in new customers.
The type of product a business sells has a significant role in creating an effective customer retention strategy. For example, a store selling coffee beans will be categorically different from one selling high-end furniture. That said, when did you last search for ways to engage your existing customers to purchase more of your products? Suppose you haven’t marketed again to your current customers after making their first sale. In that case, today is the day to create a cohesive customer retention strategy. And, you have nothing to worry about, as we will help you with creating one.
Improve Customer Support
An effective customer support system allows businesses to communicate with their customers effectively and provide them with ample information regarding any queries. Having a help desk or live chat tool at their disposal can turn a customer’s complaint or question into a resolution. A resolved complaint or answered question will often turn an unhappy, annoyed customer into a repeat, loyal one. Research suggests that happiness has a place in a customer’s mind. They see friendly, consistent, and fast customer support as the gold standard, whether online or via telephonic conversation.
In the end, high-quality customer support means businesses have to interact with their customers on their terms. Another way to improve customer support is to invest in the right professionals. Customer support tools are not going to operate themselves. Hiring motivated customer support professionals will allow any business to keep their customers happy. It will make them come back and make more purchases.
Optimize Online Experience
Yes, businesses need to attract their customers to their website. It means they should improve their online store or website and make it more user-friendly, or in simple terms, easy to navigate from top to bottom. They can either do this by hiring a UX or UI designer or doing it themself if they have the right knowledge. Furthermore, there are certain things that they need to do to make their website easy-to-navigate, which include;
- having a hassle-free checkout process
- reducing steps to reach the transaction phase of a purchase
- working on the website’s loading speed
- using quality, SEO-friendly content to increase leads and bounce rates
This list is incomplete and only touches the surface when talking about ways to improve a website.
Creating A Customer Loyalty Program
Loyalty programs, or as we like to call them, customer retention programs, will be an effective strategy to improve purchasing frequency from existing customers. And, on top of that, they earn valuable rewards when they make purchases consistently. Something such as this becomes a profitable exchange between them and their customers. They get more value whenever they purchase a product. And the business reaps the rewards in the form of repeat business.
Businesses can also utilize a points system, allowing customers to earn welcome points when creating a new account. When customers see that it’s effortless to earn welcome points, they will refer it to other people while also making return purchases.
Create An Onboarding Program
Utilizing onboarding programs can prove a useful customer retention strategy if an existing customer purchased a product but does not know how to use it. When someone buys a product and cannot operate it with ease and comfort, they will grow frustrated and go for a similar offering. An onboarding program features a trained professional assigned by the seller who teaches buyers how to operate a product according to their requirements.
Customers have to follow strict deadlines. They cannot afford to waste time learning to master the operation of a particular product. For example, onboarding programs’ significance is apparent when a B2B company sells solutions to other companies. Instead of hoping that the customer knows how to use it, they send over a professional who teaches them how to operate it. It allows the customer to maintain deadlines and achieve their goals on time.
Use Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is now so popular that almost 90 percent of all USA companies are using it. Social media platforms contain millions of potential customers that every business can engage with to increase sales and promote brand loyalty. However, to do such a thing, they would want to have a dominating online presence, so existing customers can easily interact. After all, we are talking about retention here, not acquisition.
Businesses need to utilize hashtags, direct comments, tags and mentions to monitor their existing customers’ activities. Also, they need to have a reliable social media marketing team that will respond to any customer inquiries, questions, and comments on these platforms.
Provide A Variety Of Delivery Options
These days, everyone wants to solve their problems faster. The only reason a customer opens a business’s online store is to get the products delivered in a matter of hours. It means that companies should make their customer’s shopping experience very easy. One way to do it is by offering them various paid and unpaid, timely delivery and return options.
For example, Amazon offers its customers various delivery options just for customer retention purposes. When a customer sees a free of cost, same-day-delivery option available, they will not hesitate and straight out buy the product. And, when he/she gets the product on time, they will end up buying more products from the same business. Also, for customers that buy more products than they need, a free returns option will do wonders for customer retention.
Conclusion
Businesses everywhere should always be on the lookout for ways that allow them to retain their existing customers. They should not forget that the only way they can bring in more customers is by keeping their current ones satisfied. After all, word of mouth and social media shares go a long way to promote brand awareness and loyalty. Consider the retention strategies mentioned in the article to ensure that you have a reliable but adaptable game plan that brings in new customers while retaining your existing ones.
