It is easier to find articles and blogs on how to attract new customers to your business, but how many times have you seen a blog on retaining your old customers? Well, maybe there are plenty of blogs for that too, but how many businesses apply these strategies? Oftentimes, we see that the focus is more on attracting newer customers than retaining current customers. As a business, you can’t assume that your customer will stick around once he/she likes your products and services. They can just as easily find some other brand, preferably one that knows how to retain a customer.
This is why it is important to know and apply some customer retention strategies to keep your customers interested and coming back. In today’s blog, we will be looking at some of the best strategies for customer retention for this year. While we won’t really talk about any examples of a good company or brand, let us use one example: Xfinity customer service. Xfinity’s support team can be highly responsive and quick with their appointments, and this is just one quality that makes them great!
But anyway, let’s get right into it then!
What is customer retention and why is it important?
Let’s take a look at what customer retention means. Customer retention is the practice of increasing the repeat customer rate all the while maximizing value from the same customers. In simple terms, it is the practice of ensuring that the customer wants to buy from your brand repeatedly and wouldn’t get deterred by your competitor.
Benefits of customer retention
Customers are what make a brand! You could open a store today and get closed down tomorrow due to no sales. No sales mean no customers. So, in order for any business to be a success, you need to have customers and the ability to keep the customers coming back brings multiple benefits. Let’s take a look at some of these benefits:
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- Increase in profits
- Better relationships with brand ambassadors
- More cost-effective to sell to existing customers
- Higher average order value
Customer retention strategies
Given below are some of the best customer retention strategies so that you can check and work on them as needed.
Improve customer support
Improving your customer support is one of the first things you should do. Even if you have a great record for customer service, check to see what else you could improve. The whole point of a customer support department or team is to ensure customers do not have any unanswered problems, queries, or complaints. Whether they are at the store or communicating from home, they need to be at ease and get the solution to their problem or the answer to their question.
Start a customer loyalty program
Customer loyalty programs play a big role in retaining customers. After all, isn’t this something we all go through at some point? Stores that offer you some sort of reward like a point system or a discount on your purchases use this tactic. It’s a strategy to get the customer to spend more and earn limited-time rewards or discounts. Additionally, when customers can save their points and use them another day, it is another way of encouraging them to come again.
Send engaging emails
Build a relationship with your client via engaging emails. Every day, a person receives a bunch of emails from varying businesses and brands regarding sales, promotion, etc. Add to that the spam and junk emails and even the emails from their work or friends and family. Naturally, they’re not going to be sitting there going through each email to see which one is interesting enough to look at. So, you need to make sure the email gets their attention and reminds them of the experience and purchase.
Offer personalized shopping experiences
Another way to retain your customer is by offering personalized shopping experiences for your customers. Give them recommendations based on their search history and recent purchases. Advise them on the items they have already purchased and attach a guide. Give them ideas of what could go along with it and add in some reference décor pics. The sky’s the limit here, so do as you see fit!
Offer fast delivery
Late delivery is one of the things that most people hate. Why? You’ve already made the purchase and paid for it, so why do you have to wait 2-3 business days for this new item to come? Why can’t you just receive it the next day? Well, the distance might be the biggest problem here and while there’s not much you can do about it, you could speed up the delivery service. Choose a courier company that offers speedy delivery.
Make returns easy
The return process is probably the hardest for both, the customer and the salesperson. While the customer is trying to get it returned, the salesperson is trying to tell them the return policy. This can cause trouble for both since things can escalate (and they usually do). To avoid this hassle, try and make an easy return process so that the customer knows what to expect and finds the process efficient and convenient. This will build trust with the customer as well.
To wrap it all up
Wrapping up, one thing that we haven’t mentioned here is that the internet carries all kinds of information and there is hardly anything that you won’t find there. This includes ideas and tips like this article here about customer retention. So, what we are trying to say is that if you feel like you don’t know how to improve or change something, simply look for help and examples online.
Keep up to date with the recent strategies and trends so you can use those to your advantage too. Thus, having a good internet connection is a necessity, and if you are looking for a connection of that sort, visit here and look at the wonderful options you have! Once you have done that, you can do the rest without a hitch!
