Losing your business isn’t a pleasant feeling, and it’s even more depressing when you don’t know what to do. We are here to help—check out some advice you can use today.
Every business strives to increase its customer base—rightfully so. An increase in the number of customers equals to increase in revenues and profits and ultimately growth. Most organizations fail to realize that keeping your current customers is as essential (If not more important) as going after new ones. A Harvard business school study reveals an increase of your retention rate by 5% can increase your profits between 25% and 95%. In this article, we will look at ways to not lose your business.
Know Your Customers
The first step to keeping your customers is to know them. A KYC is an effective method used to build a customer database, segment them, and communicate with them in their preferred language. We will briefly look at each of these and how they can help in saving the business.
- Keep A Database A database should contain their names, address (email), and phone numbers if possible. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, but it is good to have one. Suppose you have a comprehensive list of names and are short on time. You can set a time frame to work with, maybe in the last year or six months, so it’s a task you can do.
- Segment Your Database The next thing is to segment your data. It can be by buying patterns, age, demography, sex, volume purchased, or the frequency of purchase from the company. Segmenting allows you to understand your customers better based on their buying patterns and needs. The information makes you serve them better. If struggling to get information, you can use the SignalHire app by downloading the Google Chrome extension to find their contact details.
- Communicate in The Language Each Segment Understand One of the most significant things about knowing your customers is understanding their needs and realizing how to communicate with them. Suppose you own a small unisex clothing store, and you want to reach out to your customers. You won’t word or send the same catalogs to your male and female customers. That’s because they are two different segments, and it will not be efficient to do that. But if you tailor the words to each segment, you’re more likely to get results.
Train Your Staff
Your staff represents the first point of contact for any new customer or business, so training your staff to address customers will help retain them. One interesting statistic is happy employees lead to satisfied clients. And satisfied clients are more likely to stay with your business. Happy employees are the biggest advertisers of your business because they enjoy working with your business.
It’s easier for them to give their best and build fruitful relationships with the customers. If you have to fire an employee, look into their customer relationship and, if possible, contact the client and have them know you value their relationship before reassigning the account to a new person.
Recognize Customer Loyalty and Reward It
People love appreciation, and recognizing your loyal customers is one way of retaining them. There are various ways you can decide to appreciate loyal customers. The common ones are using gift cards and coupon cards. Some organizations go the extra mile of creating VIP clubs for their members, with ranks like gold, silver, and bronze.
This gesture signifies a lot for your clients. But you can also get creative with this. If a small business, you can call them personally and offer them seats to a popular restaurant in the city, shout out their social media account, or any other gesture that sends the message of valuing them.
Improve On Services Based On Feedback
Sometimes customers don’t leave because of how unappreciated they feel, but because of the quality of the service rendered. It may be a hard pill to swallow, but maybe sometimes it’s not about them but your business. To clarify if this is the case or not, ask them for feedback. It can be a survey outlining the core areas of your business.
Some will fill it with no incentive, but most will probably need a reason to do it. You can offer a discount on their next purchase or a code for their next subscription to show them they are doing it for something in return. What is important is you should go through the feedback and determine what areas they say your business lack in and concentrate on improving those aspects of the business.
Choose And Manage Your Communication Platforms
In the age of social media, more companies are giving customers more options to communicate with them. Companies like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn have become crucial aspects of a business communication channel. Customers don’t reach out to companies through phones and emails as often as they once did. They now use social media platforms, and therefore it’s vital a company chooses the right platform and effectively manages it.
In choosing what social media platform suits the company, you can look at where other businesses in the industry primarily use, do a test trial on those sites, or employ an expert to help. After finding the best platform for your business, engage with those who actively interact with the account. Also, address complaints and negative comments immediately. Doing this is a way of putting yourself out there to the customers and showing that you care.
Attempt to Keep the Most Valuable Customers
There is a saying that only 20 percent of your customers make 80 percent of your revenue stream. Some customers are more vital to your business than others so, do your best to keep these businesses. One good way of keeping these customers is to make them feel special. The owner or the CEO of the company should interact with them. You can make it your duty to know about their personal lives if possible. Send in holiday presents and thank you cards to show they mean a lot to you.
Add Value In Other Ways
One good way of adding value is by educating your customers. Many businesses now invest heavily in content marketing materials like blogs and newsletters that aim to educate clients. Doing this makes your clients believe you are an authority in that field. And if they see you as one, they are more likely to stay and continue to do business with you. It’s an effective way of educating your client while showing that they can trust you as a creditable source of information and hence be loyal to your business.
Final Thoughts
The aim of the article isn’t to stop all your customers from leaving, but to help reduce the rate at which they go. You cannot keep everyone, but you can put in the effort to stop them from leaving your business for another one if you put some of these points into practice. We understand the feeling of a customer leaving, and even if there was nothing in your power to stop it. One thing you can do is bounce back up from it. It’s a setback, and you will learn from it.
This post was part of a sponsored content series but was written as an editorial service piece for readers.
