Best CRM Methods: It’s quite challenging to imagine a successful business without happy customers, especially in today’s world where consumers are spoiled for choice. The days where one entity controlled the market and customers had no other options are gone. Today’s customers have much more leverage and can quickly change your business’s fortunes depending on the treatment they get.
Therefore, business needs to bring their “A” game to make customers happy. According to statistics from the Gartner Group, 20 percent of existing customers account for 80 percent of most businesses’ future revenue. Usually, this revenue will come from cross-selling and up-selling offers, which will require less marketing costs.
To show the importance of customer service and retention, research by Invespro indicated that it costs businesses five times more money to get new customers than to keep loyal ones. But what exactly is customer retention, and how can CRM help?
What is Customer Retention?
Simply put, customer retention is one of the ways or methods used to engage existing customers so that everyone remains loyal to your brand by buying your products and service repeatedly. Customer retention is quite different from lead generation and customer acquisition in that it focuses on converted customers. Ideally, your customer retention techniques should help you build strong relationships with your products’ clients and consumers to boost your customers’ brand loyalty. Or at least, it should involve experts like salesforce consultants capable of providing valuable insights.
At its best, customer retention will even cause your happy customers to promote your business through word-of-mouth, social likes, or shares. But building a successful relationship isn’t easy, and that’s where CRM shines best.
Customer Acquisition Vs. Customer Retention
One of the most typical mistakes most businesses make is believing that excellent service or product is all it will take to keep customers happy. Typically, this makes customer retention an afterthought since many marketers think their outstanding products are enough to retain existing buyers. While this approach might work for some selected few, this strategy’s harsh reality is a half measure. So customer acquisition brings the buyers in, and customer retention makes sure they stay for good.
How CRM Boosts Customer Retention
Many businesses trust their CRM system to help boost sales and marketing efforts. With the right CRM, companies can collect, analyze, and manage data relevant to different customer interactions from various company departments. Aside from the other benefits of a good CRM system, it’s particularly great for client retention. Below are some of the significant ways it improves customer loyalty.
- CRM ensures a better customer service experience.
- CRM matches the right products to the customers that need them.
- It can facilitate targeted marketing.
Craft a Comprehensive Customer Journey
Customers are always on a journey, but they also have a specific goal in mind. And like Alice in Wonderland, they’ll need a hand to get them to their destination. This is the avenue your company has to make a difference. To be an excellent guide, your company has to map out the right customer journey.
Your customer journey must cover all the company’s touchpoints and customer interactions, from start to finish. This gives you a better understanding of your interaction with clients. Using your CRM, you can further enhance brand loyalty after customers make their first purchase using data that shows you how their needs evolve.
Make The Most of CRM Data
The good thing about data is that it removes the guesswork and helps you make educated decisions. Fortunately, data collection and analysis are some of the specialties of most customer relationship management tools. Thus, your retention approach should not be left to chance. Instead, it should be backed by relevant data that’s analyzed to derive patterns and trends.
The ability of data to show otherwise unnoticeable information about your customers makes it valuable for retention. Therefore, you need to realize the priceless customer information at your disposal through the CRM. The insights gleaned from this information should be the bedrock of your retention strategy.
Delight Customers With Personalized Experience
One of the increasing worries of many people is the fear of replacement by AI applications like chatbots. However, it will be a long time before humans are entirely removed from customer service.
Let’s face it, as long as businesses continue to service human customers; the end service providers will also be humans. That’s because everyone likes to be heard and served with human compassion. Therefore, you’ll have to form deeper bonds with your customers by offering them exquisite service.
Develop Loyalty Programs
Chances are, your brand currently has some buyers that revert to your business regularly. You can use CRM systems to gather information on the different levels of customer loyalty and accounts. With this information, you can craft loyalty programs targeted at your most valuable customers.
Using this approach guarantees a proactive relationship, improving their experience and creating a lock-in effect. And who knows, it might even earn you some referrals as these delighted customers help tell others about your amazing offers.
Assess Service Performance Through Feedbacks
Feedbacks are indispensable if you plan to craft and implement a successful retention plan. Your business should know the success rate and pitfalls of your current customer service strategies and marketing campaigns. This way, you can tweak them and improve their effectiveness. The ad that converted a prospect might not retain them since customer needs change over time. Here too, you can use CRM to evaluate service performance and spot areas for improvement.
Conclusion
If you want to expand your business on the way to success, it’s essential to tighten your customer retention to keep any customer that comes in the door. As already mentioned, retaining customers only costs a fraction of what it takes to acquire them. Therefore, maintaining them should be one of the fundamental goals of your business. Consequently, you should use the best retention strategies powered by a CRM built with today’s customers’ expectations and satisfaction in mind.
Also Read: How Modern Technology Can Help You Market Your Business
