If you want to build a successful business, you need to build a base of loyal customers. That means that you not only need to convince customers to do business with you in the first place, but you also need to convince them to come back and do business with you over and over again.
How can you do this? The answer is in your customer service.
On the surface, it’s simple: people will keep coming back if you provide them with a great experience. But there’s actually a little more that goes into it.
Here are a few tips you can use to make sure you’re focused on customer retention and renewals with an experience that will keep customers coming back.
Track Customer Retention Rates
In order to improve customer retention and renewals, you first need to know where you stand.
To do this, you need to regularly survey your customers to find out how many of them are new customers versus returning customers. This can be done through annual customer satisfaction surveys, transactional surveys, or a combination of those methods.
Your goal should always be to increase the number of returning customers. New customers are great too, of course. But when you get those new customers, your aim should be to convert them into a loyal customer as quickly as possible.
Regularly monitor the number of returning customers to be sure that your customer service is effective.
Focus on What’s Important to Existing Customers
When you survey your customers and potential customers, you also need to ask some specific questions about what they expect from you in terms of customer service.
Find out how satisfied they were with various key aspects of their experience with your company and if there’s anything you could have done to make that experience better. When you analyze the results, it’s important to weigh the needs of your existing customers a bit more heavily than those of your one-time customers.
It’s not that those opinions don’t matter, but those who have been doing business with you for years are likely to spend more with you and refer others. So making them happy should be your top priority and this will increase retention and renewals.
Make Sure Employees are Satisfied
Happy employees are more likely to provide great service.
Since your employees are likely to have the most regular contact with customers, it’s important that they know what’s expected of them and feel equipped to handle the challenge. When they feel challenged and comfortable with their duties, they are more likely to be happy at work.
To make sure employees are happy and comfortable with their roles, running regular employee feedback surveys is a must.
Share Feedback with Employees
One way to keep employees engaged and focused is to share the customer feedback you receive with them. That can help ensure that they know how to better serve those customers in the future.
And when they are better equipped to handle those customers, it can have a big impact on their satisfaction and your overall customer retention and renewals.
Customers Photo via Shutterstock
Customer retention is one of the most important thing to be doing in any business.
You have some great ideas here – Thanks for posting them and sharing with us Amanda
Pauline