Communication strategies are essential if you want to keep your customers happy and create a base of loyal customers in order to have an effective customer retention marketing strategy. Since bad communication is often at the core of customer complaints you should be responding to and communicating with your customers in order to keep them happy. We will talk through the best customer retention marketing techniques that you can easily implement into your business.
Why is communication important for customer retention?
Many businesses overlook communicating with existing customers and spend their time and resources on customer acquisition strategies.
Unfortunately, gaining new customers doesn’t help your customer retention rate. Your current customers want to feel appreciated, and maintaining communication with them is a great way to do this. They will feel like their voice is being heard and that you are genuinely interested in what they have to say, making them value the relationship more.
Remember, increasing customer retention rates by only 5% increases a company’s profits by 25-95%, which illustrates how important a robust customer retention marketing strategy is.
So what exactly do you need to say when you communicate with your customers?
Let them know what to expect
Setting out clear expectations is crucial to keeping your customers happy. Manage their expectations so they’re not expecting the impossible. You should be upfront and honest about delivery times, costs, and how your product or service will help them.
Making promises you can’t keep is a sure way to lose customers and get negative feedback. Remember to always “under-promise and over-deliver”. It’s better to surprise them with something good than to fail where they were expecting you to come through for them.
Let them know their voice is heard
Be responsive. When a customer reaches out to you, be it through social media, email, or even voicemail. Send a follow-up message to let them know their message has been received and you’re doing everything you can to resolve their issue.
You don’t need to wait until the problem is fixed to send a reply to them. It will put your customers at ease to know you’re taking action. If you can, try to avoid an auto-reply because they don’t feel as personal, but at the least, make your auto-reply sound friendly and warm.
If you don’t have the time to respond to every message or query, an automated response is better than nothing. Set your customer’s expectations by letting them know when they should expect to have an answer, or include a phone number they can use if they have an urgent query.
Ask them how they’re getting on with their product
This is one of the most critical customer retention emails businesses should send. Send a follow-up email to ask an existing customer how they’re getting on with the product or service and let them know you’re there to help. If you have the time or staff to do so, a phone call will work very well.
You can ask them if the service or product is meeting their needs and let them know about anything included they may not be aware of and could be taking advantage of.
Doing this will ensure your customers are aware of everything you have to offer them. It will improve their overall experience and increase the chances of returning to you as a loyal customer.
Ask for feedback on how to improve
Your customers are the best insight into the areas you need to improve on.
You can ask for feedback via an email with a survey for your customers to complete once they have received their product. You could also follow up a couple weeks afterward to see how they’re getting on with it.
Make sure to use friendly language and let them know why you want them to complete the survey—which is to improve your products or services to help them. This strategy is an easy way to collect data on customer satisfaction.
One of the most important things you need to do is monitor the feedback you receive. There’s no point in having this valuable data and not putting it to good use.
Final thoughts
Saying the right thing to your customers and having a solid flow of communication are both crucial elements to your customer retention marketing strategy. Keeping in touch with existing customers is an easy way to make them feel appreciated and become loyal customers.
Letting your customers know what to expect, that their voice is heard, asking them how they’re getting on with your product, and asking for their feedback are some easy strategies to use in your customer marketing plan that can make a huge difference to your customer retention rates.
Resources:
https://www.intouchcrm.com/why-communication-is-the-key-to-customer-retention/
https://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/the-economics-of-e-loyalty
https://www.helpscout.com/blog/customer-retention-strategies-that-work/
https://www.getfeedback.com/resources/cx/40-stats-churn-customer-satisfaction/
https://buildfire.com/customer-retention-strategies/