Everyone knows that securing new customers is more expensive than retaining existing customers. In fact, it’s estimated to be 5 to 10 times more expensive. In addition, the average spend of a repeat customer is close to 70% higher than that of a new customer.
Bringing in new clients is essential, but as revenue growth expectations rise it gets increasingly more difficult to acquire additional new clients. Therefore, as revenue expectations increase so to must the importance of customer retention.
According to the Harvard Business School, ignoring customer value as a source of profitable growth could be detrimental for any business. Just think about the potential impact on your business if you could keep all your customers for an additional month, quarter, or year. To retain customers, you must build customer loyalty and to build customer loyalty you must directly engage your clients to quickly address their needs while cultivating a personal relationship.
Here are 3 tips that should help to improve customer retention rates and improve customer loyalty:
1. Change your mindset
Stop thinking about squeezing the most out of the current transaction and instead focus on maximizing the lifetime value of your clients. Use each transaction to first and foremost build your relationship with your client – even if it means informing the client of something that could result in a smaller sale. Do what’s right and best for your client. Treat them like you would want to be treated.
2. Consulting vs. order taking
It is simple to take an order, it takes more work to build a relationship. Give your clients a reason to value a relationship with you. To do this help them, offer advice, let them know about complementary products and tips for maximizing the value of their purchase. Your clients can benefit from your products, but they should also be able to benefit from a relationship with you.
3. Be efficient and engaging
Customers value their time, so it is important to make sure that they feel like their time is being valued as well. To build client loyalty respond to customer inquiries and complaints as soon as possible, and make sure that your response is courteous and professional. Not tending to your current customers needs can make them feel ignored or that you don’t care about their business, they are likely to take their business elsewhere.
Today, online consumers expect that a “quick” response be as close to instant as possible. An email response 24 hours later or having to wait on hold for a customer support representative to take your phone call won’t cut it.
To implement the tips above you’ll need a way to communicate with your clients in real-time. You can do this via phone; however a more efficient alternative is with online customer service chat.
With online live chat a single support rep can handle 3-4 chats simultaneously. This means that you can be more efficient and address the issues, concerns, and questions of your client more expeditiously. With online customer service chat, you can converse with your clients to build a relationship and provide them with personalized advice.
To improve customer retention, you must bolster client loyalty and to do this you must engage your clients in real-time. Online customer service chat is the most productive means of real-time customer engagement.
As the importance of customer retention has become more and more apparent, it is clear that in order to keep up with the competition and maintain a loyal customer base, you must seek to level up your online customer service chat capabilities. This will provide one of the most productive ways to engage in real- time with your customers and will result in a more positive and productive experience for all your customers.
