Many small businesses face an existential crisis due to deep-pocketed conglomerates, expensive technological advancements, and fierce competition. The center of all this is customers; they have multiple options to switch from your brand to others as your competitors lure them on online and offline channels. Why is it so important to retain customers? We can get other customers anytime. Yes, we can but at what cost. Getting a new customer is relatively expensive than retaining one. The high expense is due to lengthier customer buyer’s journey for new customer acquisition and more money spent on advertisements, trials, returns, etc.
It depends on business type, whether it will be beneficial to get new customers or retain old ones. High-value items with lower purchase frequency like real estate, vehicles are more focused on acquiring new clients. In contrast, low item value and higher purchase frequency products are more retention-focused, e.g., Coffee, Cereal, etc.
How to retain customers:
- Improve Customer Support
Customer support for pre-sales and post-sales is a great way to enhance the customer experience. It may depend on the complexity of a customer’s issue to provide them with the chat option(bot or live), email, social media, or customer service representatives’ calls.
Consistent customer service is considered the gold standard. Resolving customer’s issues is a way of creating trust, and in return, a brand gets to understand their pain-points and should take measures for future problems.
2. Create customer accounts and loyalty program
Loyalty programs can help customers come back for more. It may be considered expensive when it comes to creating for all the users, so many brands give the option of ‘check out as guest.’ However, through loyalty programs and customer accounts, it is easier to store information, transaction history, and engage with the customers.
3. Stay connected
Send engaging emails to your clients; it helps keep them informed and builds a relationship even after purchase. It should be a personalized message reminding about:
- how to take care of the item they purchased
- discount offered on a product that compliments the item
- or invitation for sales and promotional offers.
Knowing your current customer base is the key to success in this day and age of the continually evolving digital world.