The right customer retention strategies are just as important as your customer acquisition plan. Finding the right strategy means that you can inspire loyalty, gather meaningful feedback, and grow revenue through winning customers for life.
In fact, revenue growth can be an excellent positive outcome when your company focuses on customer retention strategies. CallMiner estimates that U.S. companies lost $136.8 billion because customers switched to another brand. To keep that steady stream of revenue and continue to grow a loyal customer base, you can follow some basic practices that will serve as the foundation of your customer retention plan.
- Analyze Feedback
- Monitor the Competition
- Respond to Reviews
If you want a quick look and see how much money you can save (and earn) with customer retention you can check out the included Customer Retention Calculator!
Customer Retention Strategy #1: Analyzing Feedback
Consumer online reviews aren’t just essential for acquiring new customers; it’s also valuable for keeping them after the first purchase. Think of it another way: customer reviews stats show 52% of consumers mentioned that a “bad customer service interaction” was the reason they told other people to not buy the specific products or services they mentioned in their review. It’s simple: poor customer service costs businesses money. If you listen to the Voice of the Customer, you’ll find opportunities to transform their experiences and drive loyalty. One good way to listen to the customer? Pay attention to online reviews.
By analyzing online reviews, you can reveal valuable insights that improve staff operations and the overall customer experience. Additionally, you can identify pitfalls in service and work to build experiences that customers desire. Analyzing feedback helps identify areas of focus and provide brands with clear direction on how to improve experiences that will win lifelong customers.
The percentage of consumers who said a “bad customer service interaction” was why they told other people to not buy products or services mentioned in their review.
Manually scouring each review for insights takes up valuable time and energy from your staff, but you can make the entire process easier with natural language processing (NLP) software. With customer experience analytics technology, you can easily identify trends across large amounts of feedback and operationalize on that specific feedback.
For example, if you own a pizza shop and notice in the past 30 days that “pizza” is a keyword that is trending negatively in your reviews, you can dig deeper into the feedback and understand what kinds of experiences your customers are having.
Customer Retention Strategy #2: Monitor the Competition
It’s also important to keep your eyes on your rivals as a way to improve customer retention and round out your business’s overall success strategy. In fact, Crayon reported in a survey that 41% agree on the importance of competitive intelligence in their brand’s success.
In the same way that you monitor your own customer feedback, a crucial step in competitive intelligence is to take a close look at the competitive landscape. Specifically, you should take time to monitor the competition’s overall rating and reviews on business review sites.
Percentage of professionals surveyed by Crayon who agree on the importance of competitive intelligence in their brand’s success.
With the right tools, you can also gain valuable insights from reviews. Using the same technology to analyze your own reviews, NLP can save you time and can provide a better look at where competitors are performing better, which can be the basis for your insight-based customer retention strategies.
Customer Retention Strategy #3: Respond to Reviews
Customer engagement is crucial to customer retention, and the best way to do so is by responding to reviews. Specifically, it’s best to learn how to respond to negative reviews. Customer reviews stats show that an effective negative review response means 44.6% of consumers are more likely to visit a business, and 53.3% want a response within seven days.
By responding to both positive and negative reviews in a personalized and relevant manner you not only show customers that you care about their opinion; your actions tell them that you are willing to engage outside of traditional work hours to hear out their issues or to thank them for their uplifting feedback. The result is a more loyal customer base that can bring in plenty of revenue. Use the included Customer Retention Calculator to see just how much money comes in from your returning customers.
Percentage of consumers who are more likely to visit a business as a result of an effective negative review response.
In fact, customer reviews data shows that responding to a 1- or 2-star review within the first 24 hours means that there is a 33% chance of the writer coming back to update their feedback to a better score. In other words, responding to reviews and resolving conflict can result in more satisfied customers who are more likely to return to your brand in the future because of the effort put into ensuring satisfaction.
Over time, these long-time consumers won’t just be a major factor in growing your company’s revenue; they’re also a crucial marketing tool. Utilizing the Voice of the Customer is a powerful, cost-effective tool. It’s the social proof people need to convert to a business. Your satisfied customers can easily bring new people in, but it will be your method of engagement that will make the difference when it comes to creating a lifetime customer.
Conclusion
With your customer retention strategy in place, you can guarantee the survival of your business for the long haul. Taking the time to listen and engage with your online reviews and monitoring your rivals’ performance are key to this strategy. The necessary changes will take time and money, but the right customer retention strategy will drive more revenue from your satisfied customers and bring benefits you need for a long and fruitful enterprise.