ASK LISTEN RETAIN Customer Retention Program
Wikipedia: Customer retention is the activity that a selling organization undertakes in order to reduce customer defections. Successful customer retention starts with the 1st contact with a customer and continues throughout the lifetime of a relationship
Seattle, WA (PRWEB) March 26, 2014
AWARENESS:
For those who feel that customer retention plays a relatively minor role in helping a company grow a healthy bottom line, here are a few statistics you might be interested in. According to Bain and Co., a 5% increase in customer retention can increase a company’s profitability by 75%. And if those numbers don’t impress you, Gartner Group statistics tell us that 80% of your company’s future revenue will come from just 20% of your existing customers. Still not sold on customer retention? One final statistic provided by Lee Resource Inc. should give you plenty to think about: Attracting new customers will cost your company 5 times more than keeping an existing customer.
ATTITUDE:
Introduction: Great service is anything extra that you can do for your customer that will make them take notice of you and say WOW!
WOW! Service will in turn generate free word-of-mouth advertising (because people like to tell memorable stories) that will in turn help build your business. Plus the customers will be not merely satisfied when the next opportunity rolls around for them to purchase your particular good or service - they will be loyal.
ACTION:
Introduction: Many businesses believe that if they have a great product or service and provide an outstanding customer experience, customer retention will naturally follow. However, customers don’t owe you their loyalty. You have to earn it — continually. Having an effective customer retention program in place gives you the ability to identify, track, and respond to any hint of an unhappy or potentially disengaged customer.
ACTION SUMMARY:
1) ASK: There isn’t a simpler method of retaining customers then just asking customers what exactly is it they seek from your business and how they want it given to them. Whether you ask them via a printed survey, an online survey, over the phone, in person, or via email, it is crucial that you just ask them. You’d be surprised at the detailed response you’ll receive.
2) LISTEN: Not every business owner believes that “the customer is always right,” or that the “the customer is king” and they’re quite right to believe so. But, in situations where customers are distraught and tend to seek attention through emotional outbursts, it pays to purposefully LISTEN to take control of the situation by proactively appeasing the customer and doing everything possible to pander to the customer’s frustrations.
3) RETAIN: All the best customer retention strategies require constant feedback from the customer to establish what is working and what is not working. Once you have ASKed your customers for feedback, and you have LISTENed to their responses (good and bad), set out to make changes in your attitude (step 1) and any changes required to your processes and product or service delivery (step 2). Make sure to respond to the
customer feedback (step 3) to let your customer’s know that you have heard their concern and have pro-actively made changes to improve your customers’ experience.
CONCLUSION:
These customer service tips are some of the easiest ways to impress and retain your customers, often for life. But, don’t take my word for it. Put it into practice and you can determine for yourself, if your customer service is working by the number of repeat buyers appearing in your database.
Do you have a Customer Retention system in place to help assure you are doing your very best not only to acquire new customers but to retain your existing ones?
The full document with more statistics, details and tips available upon request at: https://27F94C.campgn3.com/Customer-Retention-Tips-by-ASK-LISTEN-RETAIN.