5 Do’s And Don’ts For Customer Retention
Most often businesses concentrate on acquiring new customers as their topmost priority. While gaining customers surely is beneficial, it is equally important for businesses to concentrate on customer retention. Did you know that it is easier and much cheaper to retain your existing customers than acquire new ones?
Your existing customers have already used your services and thus have a fair knowledge about your business and services. According to a study by Harvard Business Review, it has been found that increasing customer retention by just 5%, businesses can increase revenue as much as 25 to a whopping 95%. This means that it is 5-25 times cheaper to retain an existing customer than acquire a new one.
Before we dwell into the Do’s and Don’ts of customer retention, let’s understand what is customer retention basically?
The answer is quite simple. It’s a strategy of getting more customers to remain loyal to the brand/business. This strategy leads one-time shoppers to make frequent purchases and also refer friends and acquaintances to purchase from your business. The result of customer retention is not just increasing revenue but gaining profit in a way that sustains long-term return business goals.
Though time and again we hear it’s easier to retain existing customers, most businesses fail to do so. According to an Econsultancy report, when asked why customers leave a brand, as much as 68% of the customers reported that brands do not care about customers as the reason for leaving the brand/business.
An effective customer retention program helps businesses to identify the gaps, track them and take necessary steps required that will lead for increased retention and act as long term source for increasing business revenue.
Customer retention drives business revenue
It is necessary for businesses to earn customer loyalty continuously even after years of association. A study conducted by KPMG suggested the most significant driver for increasing business revenue is customer retention. In the next 1-3 years, the report suggested that 52% of the revenue will be driven through customer retention.
This blog will help you understand the Do’s and Don’ts for customer retention easily through Cloud-based business communication platform.
Cloud Telephony makes it easy for customer retention
Cloud telephony model helps deliver telephone applications on the cloud as a hosted solution. It is a messaging and voice service that does not require traditional business telephone systems such as PBX or EPBAX.
While we understand, for a business to truly grow, both existing and acquiring new customers are very important. It is, however, easier to approach the existing customers since businesses have a previous purchase history with them which makes it easier for them to connect to customers on a personal level.
Whether you have a CRM platform already in use or do not want to invest a lot in the setting up of new infrastructure for enabling business communication, Cloud telephony is the answer. Cloud telephony messaging and voice platform gives businesses the flexibility to scale as they grow and integrate their platform onto existing CRM platform making it easier to reach customers and retain them.
Read on to know Cloud-based platform help business achieve customer retention easily.
Do’s:
1. Helps increase conversion rates
Cloud telephony providers help increase conversion rates for businesses by helping them reach customers on their most used device like smartphone through their messaging and voice platform easily. Messages have an open rate of 98% which makes it the most popular marketing channel for businesses. Offers, discounts customized for your existing customers can help increase revenue since users already have used your brand and hence trust is enhanced.
2. Cost-effective marketing
Cloud telephony services caters to the need of businesses whether a startup or large enterprise or SMEs. It will not drain businesses money by allowing their resources to be chained to a desk making calls and having them explain about your products and services again to the customer. Instead, cloud telephony platforms provide services like IVR, outbound dialing, messaging, etc. which makes it easy for businesses to get feedback about their products and improve their products and services to cater to customer needs.
3. Enhanced profits
A new user always expects more discount since they are using your platform for the first time whereas an existing customer knows how good your products are. This may lead to lesser discounts and offers given by businesses to woo exiting customers. It’s important that businesses cash in the opportunity of customer’s trust on the product and brand thus making them more open to use newer products from you.
4. High ROI
Cloud telephony platforms help achieve high ROI since these platforms allows businesses to achieve personalized communication. Cloud telephony leaders like Kaleyra who have a global reach worldwide helps businesses by providing the minutest details like the time stamp of message, geolocation, send links, attachments, call recordings, get feedback from customers through survey, provide detailed analytics and real-time data about business is communicating with customer. How satisfied is the customer with their services and products etc. which gives a clear picture and tailor make marketing campaigns such that businesses achieve high ROI.
5. Target VIP customers
Cloud telephony providers like Kaleyra give detailed insights to businesses on which of their customers are making most number of purchases of their products and services. The analytics and data give businesses a view of how many customer have made maximum purchases or who are the clients who used your services in the past extensively but have remained dormant in the recent past. Businesses can target the dormant customers and send them special discounts thereby achieving customer retention.
If the above-said list helps businesses achieve customer retention, the below list of Don’ts will help businesses know what not to do if they want their customers to stay with them for a long time. Read on to know Cloud telephony helps reduce the issues:
Don’ts:
1. Longer waiting time
Customers get frustrated if they have to wait for longer durations for simple queries. Cloud telephony solutions like IVR reduces manual intervention and automates repeated queries from customers through simple keypress. IVR also allows to understand the number of customers in the queue and allows customer support agents to handle queries smarter or connecting them to available agents leading to reduced wait times.
2. Too many queries
Customers get annoyed if the customer support agent bombards them with too many questions. A Cloud telephony platform helps the agent gain knowledge about customer’s query, maintain a proper follow-up by mentioning details in notes which helps the next agent handling the issue to understand the query better and faster.
3. Too many options
Make the customer journey smoother when they call the business for assistance. Providing too many options tends to make the customer confused again leading to frustration and businesses losing out on customers. Cloud-based voice platforms like that of Kaleyra streamlines the customer journey with options such that customers reach agents faster and get the desired solutions.
4. Not following-up
If the customers query is going to make more than one call to resolve the issue, it is wise to incorporate technologically advanced platform such as Kaleyra’s voice platform which allows support agents too follow-up on queries at a time convenient for the customer showing them that the business is ready to go the extra mile to resolve issue. Not following up due to manual gaps leads to businesses losing out on customers.
5. Not being available
Customers more often than not expect around the clock support from businesses to resolve their queries. Cloud telephony voice platforms helps streamline these processes easily and ensure effective time management from the business such that it results in happy customer experience. Let’s say you want to run a support center only from 9 AM to 6 PM, cloud telephony voice platforms, allows businesses to incorporate chatbots which are available 24×7 or even allow customers to leave their queries on voicemail such that support agents can handle the queries in a systematic way ensuring the customers of quality service.
We hope this list of Do’s and Don’ts will help you increase business revenue and achieve customer retention.
Still not sure how Cloud telephony can help your business? Drop us an email at sales@kaleyra.com or call us at 080-4027555, and our team will be happy to help you. You can also visitwww.kaleyra.com to sign up for a free trial and get firsthand experience of our cloud-based products and services.
