This article throws light upon the top ten ways used to retain the existing customers. Some of the ways are: 1. Welcome the Complaints you Receive 2. Instigate Loyalty Programs 3. Send out Questionnaires and Surveys to Existing Customers 4. Check for Repeat Sales Often to Instill your Company’s Brand 5. Reactivate Dormant Customers and Others.
Retaining the Existing Customer:
- Welcome the Complaints you Receive
- Instigate Loyalty Programs
- Send out Questionnaires and Surveys to Existing Customers
- Check for Repeat Sales Often to Instill your Company’s Brand
- Reactivate Dormant Customers
- Have you Scheduled a Frequent Communications Plan to your Customer Base
- Provide Exceptional Customer Service
- Make a Good First Impression
- Make Courtesy Top Priority with all Customer-Facing Staff
- Do Regular Reviews
Way # 1. Welcome the Complaints you Receive:
Your starting point for customer retention techniques is understanding why you’re losing your existing customers. Most lost customers don’t actually complain, and just simply walk away. Analyze those complaints that you do receive for trends in why you’re losing customer loyalty then make appropriate changes. Use appropriately customer satisfaction survey questions to prompt customers for product & improved service ideas.
Way # 2. Instigate Loyalty Programs:
Provide your frequent customers with money-off coupons or other loyalty programs as part of a simple customer retention strategy. You benefit from plenty of repeat purchases and they spread the good word about the benefits of purchasing from your business. Use online business systems to track and monitor the conversion rates of these individual loyalty schemes.
Way # 3. Send out Questionnaires and Surveys to Existing Customers:
All the best customer retention strategies require constant feedback from the customer to establish what is working and what is not working. Surveys, questionnaires and customer loyalty research are the perfect way of doing this. Incorporate special offers or gifts to encourage responses.
Way # 4. Check for Repeat Sales Often to Instill your Company’s Brand:
Your existing customer base will be more loyal as they make more purchases. Improve sales performance by providing newsletters and regular communications to make sure they’re informed of new product lines, offers, related products, etc.
Way # 5. Reactivate Dormant Customers:
Customers that purchased from you previously are more likely to come back and purchase more (just so long as they were not displeased by the service). Try contacting customers you haven’t heard from in a while to see if any of your current offers would interest them. Basic customer service training tips always state that holding onto existing customers is much easier than gaining new ones – so you should start treating former customers due to their greater potential.
Way # 6. Have you Scheduled a Frequent Communications Plan to your Customer Base:
Your communications are fundamental to any customer retention techniques. However, has to be planned out. You have to provide a strategy for how often you want to contact existing customers and decide upon what communication type should be used (e.g. e-mail, newsletters, etc.).
Way # 7. Provide Exceptional Customer Service:
This one is easy! The better the service you provide, the more customers you’re going to retain, and the more loyal they will be. For online systems make sure you have enough customer service operatives and server performance monitoring tools to ensure customers have rapid access to your website and customer support teams.
Way # 8. Make a Good First Impression:
Have you heard the old maxim – first impressions last? Well it’s very true. The simplest customer retention strategy you can implement straightaway is to make sure that the first contact you make with customers is positive, easy and courteous. This applies whether you’re selling online, face-to-face or door-to-door.
Way # 9. Make Courtesy Top Priority with all Customer-Facing Staff:
You will surely lose customers rapidly if your staff are not courteous. Instigate training programs for all customer service staff in good communications, active listening and attentiveness to customer satisfaction. Make it part of their annual performance review too by using different types of performance appraisal methods.
These customer retention strategies do cost money but pay off big-time with the amount of repeat purchases you receive. A side benefit is that more staff are more likely to enjoy their roles and be more professional and polite even with their own colleagues.
Way # 10. Do Regular Reviews:
Do you think that applying these customer retention strategies is a once off thing? You need to do regular reviews on a scheduled basis to establish if complaint rates are dropping, what the nature of complaints are, customer satisfaction levels (i.e. from questionnaires), etc. Always be looking to improve the level of satisfaction the customer is receiving.