8 Customer Retention Strategies Every New Business Should Follow

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Photo by Luis Núñez, CC0 1.0

Customer retention is perhaps one of the most important things that every business should be focused on at all times. Retaining customers is much cheaper than trying to get new customers to come through your doors all of the time. Plus, these returning customers are more likely to buy more of your products because they have already experienced your products and trust you as a brand.

And the good news is that there are plenty of customer retention strategies that you can try out in order to make sure that customers stay with you from the beginning. These are especially crucial for those of you who are starting up new businesses and need that strong customer base to build profit from. Keep reading down below to learn more about these strategies and how you can implement them in your business from the start.

1. Set Customer Expectations Properly

One of the first things that you’ve got to do if you want to keep those customers around for the long-run is to set their expectations early. This is one of the most crucial aspects of your customer’s experience. If they are expecting something completely out of the ball park amazing and you don’t deliver up to their expectations, then they are going to have a negative experience.

It’s recommended that in order to meet those expectations, in the process set them a bit lower than you can actually deliver. This will ensure that the expectations aren’t set way higher than what you can actually give your customers. That way, when you actually exceed those expectations because they were set lower, your customers are going to be super happy with the product or service you have delivered to them. In turn, that will cause them to come back for repeat business again and again.

2. Be the Expert in The Room

Next up, if you want customers to come back for more and more, then you have got to become the expert in the room. You’ve got to become the guru in your industry that your customers come to for advice. It’s simply not enough anymore to just deliver a product or a service. Your consumers are looking for way more than just that if you want them to stay loyal to your company.

And there are many ways to do that. You can create a blog where your team shares advice that’s relevant in your industry. Or you can give each of your latest customer’s courtesy calls to explain some of the changes in the industry and what they should look out for. It all depends on what industry you happen to find yourself in and what you can do for your customer. Especially, if you are dealing with professionals, it might turn out profitable for you, as they are always on the lookout for upgrades, and new technology.

3. Build Trust Through Relationship-Building

Another great strategy you can implement to keep those customers coming back for more is to actually try to build relationships with them. Your customers are not just people who come for your product and then leave without saying a word. If you want to build trust with them, you’ve got to start some relationship building activities. This can include many different things – whether that’s an email campaign, extra discounts, or starting a blog to connect directly with the people.

When you build relationships with your customers, they are more likely to see your company as a trustworthy figure and not some big business that they can’t relate to. Plus, it’s just way nicer to deal with people who are nice to you and actually know what you desire.

4. Implement Anticipatory Service

Another strategy you can implement to bring up your customer retention rates is to implement anticipatory services throughout your company. Basically, these are things that you do to solve problems before they even happen. It’s being proactive, rather than reactionary whenever those problems do come up.

There are plenty of examples of this and they are completely dependent on your own business in your specific industry. For example, in the airline industry, some airline companies will text passengers that their flight is going to be late a couple of hours before takeoff. This gives customers an idea of when they should actually be at the airport so that they don’t have a negative experience, waiting for hours for a flight that was delayed. See how you can implement these types of anticipatory strategies in your business!

5. Make Proper Use of Automation Services

Customer retention is directly tied to your company’s usage of automation services. Everything from automatic email marketing to automating invoices makes the lives of your customers so much better. When you use automation services throughout your company, not only do they save you money in the long run and help relieve your employees from your manual duties, your customers are going to get what they want faster. This automation makes your processes so much more efficient and streamlined than ever before. And those customers that get their product or service in a fast amount of time are much happier than those who had to wait around for days.

6. Build Up KPI’s Around Customer Service

One of the best things that you can do to improve customer retention is to improve your customer service. But how can you exactly do that and measure your employee’s performance off of the service they provide? Well, you should look into developing KPI’s that are actually directly tied to the service that your employees provide. That way, you will be able to identify whether or not that employee is actually providing high-quality customer service and attributing to your company’s positive customer retention rate. You can do this in several ways – customer surveys are one example to see what kind of service they have been getting.

7. Go Above and Beyond for Your Customers

You of course have got to make going above and beyond a core value in your company. If you want your employees to provide excellent customer service and actually care about their customers and clients, then going above and beyond needs to be instilled in them on day one. This is the strategy that perhaps is the most important in improving customer retention and making sure that customers have an excellent experience when they’re shopping for your products and services.

One way you can make customers loyal to your business is, by teaching them how they can manage small issues themselves and educating them about your field of expertise. If you have a mobile repairing shop, you can explain your customer about the possible issues of your smartphone, cost of certain damages, or even help them understand the mobile architecture better. Or, if you have a dental clinic, you can explain your customer about the basic tooth structure in study models and possible cure of problems at home. This will not only build trust among your customers but also educate them about the issue. A very good strategy to retain your customer from going to nearby store.

8. Build Up Relationships Online

Your customers are all online. That’s just the name of the game when it comes to operating a business in today’s digital age. That’s why you should definitely start building up relationships with your customers online to improve customer retention. This includes all of those social media accounts that you never use – make sure to get them going and engage with those customers and potential customers. Everything from creating Facebook groups to asking questions on Instagram will help you to have a much higher customer retention rate.

And there you have it! If you want to improve your customer retention rates, then these are the strategies that will help you get to where you want to go. Which of these have you already tried out and which do you need to start working on in your company?

Himanshu Agarwal
SmartWeb
Himanshu Agarwal is the Founder & CEO of a Digital Marketing firm SmartWeb. He is an online market analyst, startup strategist and a writer. He has written on several topics including content marketing and technology. When not writing or on laptop, he loves spending his time reading inspiration books and watching movies.

2 COMMENTS

  1. Great Job!! This is a phenomenal list of ideas on how to retain customers. Thanks for putting this together. Another way to retain customers would be delivering personalized experience. Indeed, It has been found in a recent study that 89% of customers are willing to give retailers with personal information in lieu of targeted content. So, capturing customer real-time behavior, interests, preferences and data, one can really deliver best customer service.

  2. Hey,

    These strategies are really useful for new business and followed correctly, can help to improve customer retention rates. Also I would like to add that, companies should focus on ease, efficiency, and emotion. By focusing on these aspects, you are able to build both trust and transparency, two things that customers value very highly.

    Thanks for sharing this article,
    Have a great day ahead.

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