Customer loyalty is based on the level of satisfaction your customers feel, taking customer retention to the next level. Even though your customers continue giving you their business, it doesn’t mean you have an excellent product or a strong relationship with customers. Customer loyalty speaks to the relationship you hold with your customers through their satisfaction and continued business.
If you find that you are losing business, you can assess the situation by determining the churn rate. Churn is the percentage of customers lost over a specific period. Churn can be caused by several things and are often unique to each individual customer. Though a few common reasons for customer churn may be:
PRICE
Price is one of the most common objections among customers. They are looking for the most cost-effective solution to their problems, which is why it is so important to establish your product/service’s value to them.
PRODUCT MARKET FIT
This reason for churn speaks to a potential lack of communication between customer service and sales. Sales reps must be searching for customers that will be a good fit for the company, thereby reducing churn.
USER EXPERIENCE
If the software or platform the customer uses to work with your business doesn’t offer a pleasant experience or is otherwise difficult to master, they may not keep coming back.
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Customers want to feel welcome and valued by your business, which is why it is important to place value on all aspects of your brand — your marketing content, social media channels, customer support team, and account managers.
When you have examined the potential reasons for the churn your company is seeing, you can follow these steps to calculate your business churn rate and then improve your customer retention.
To calculate churn, you must first define the time period you will be using, then determine the number of customers acquired and the number of customers lost in this time period. Then, divide the number of lost customers by the number of acquired customers and multiply that number by 100%. The final result is your customer churn rate.
Rather than solving churn for any customer likely to cancel, redirect energy and resources to your best, most profitable clients. Try creating a list of clients that have a history of acting on retargeting tactics.
Once you have landed a new client, start your working relationship by setting expectations early. This will eliminate any false preconceptions they have and set you up for success in reaching their expectations. Doing so will also help you to create a roadmap for the future of the relationship.
Communication can be the difference between keeping and losing a client. Effective communication will drive relationships, and relationships will drive loyalty. Remember to touch base on projects, life events, and everything in between. If you truly get to know your customers, loyalty will be stronger, and retention will be higher.
As with so many things, especially business-related, communication is vital. Talk to your clients regularly to talk about results. This will let them know the money they are spending with you is money well spent, and they can see a return. Be sure to celebrate successes together; when they succeed, you succeed. So, show them how much you care.
While most companies will overcommunicate and really step up after a negative experience, those that bolster loyalty are the ones that focus on relationships early. Throughout the customer journey, create milestones and emphasize making positive memories with your customers. Try sharing yearly memories and sending a gift at critical milestones.
Ask your clients how they are feeling. Ask what they don’t see from your service that they would like to see. Work with them to determine in what ways you can improve your overall product/service. Then, act on this information to make it better, retain your customers, and build loyal relationships.
Humans instinctively want to repay kindness with kindness. With your clients, two types of reciprocity can be instituted to generate loyalty. Surprise reciprocity includes surprise gifts like random free swag, while trumpeted reciprocity is going above and beyond to add value. When it comes to improving loyalty, trumpeted reciprocity is critical.
By including an incentive for churn-likely customers, retention will be higher. Often, incentives and offers are targeted only at new customers; however, promotions, loyalty programs, and discounts can show current customers you value them. This not only helps reduce churn but helps to boost loyalty.
To reduce churn, build customer retention and loyalty, you must be actively working to always make their experience better. Find tools, platforms, and services to improve their experience and implement them into your customer experience so they can get the help they need as efficiently as possible.
When your sales team is working on landing a new account, ensure that you are highlighting your successes. Talk about successes that you’ve had with other clients and how your product/service positively impacted their business and eased their pain points.
If you are losing customers, use these tips to improve customer loyalty and reduce churn. If you need help implementing this change, contact the GROWL Team today!