Customer Experience

Customer Churn:10 Actionable Customer Retention Strategies

The recent COVID crisis has massively obstructed business continuity. The operation that is facing the most critical hit is – Customer Retention. Leading businesses have already started to work on efficient Customer Retention Strategies. But are you still sticking to the old-fashioned customer retention strategies? Implementing new actionable customer retention strategies to stop customers from getting churned has become the need of the hour.

Now, you need to offer the best possible service along with humane support to keep winning customer trust and loyalty. Because you know “A happy customer is the best promoter.” So take note of following customer retention strategies that will help you keep your revenue stream stable.

We interviewed multiple business owners and customer success leaders. And summed up for you the most efficient and actionable strategies they are using to reduce the churn during COVID. 

Focusing on Customer Retention Strategies

A 5% increase in the retention rate can increase profits by 25% – 95%! 

You can easily sell additional services to customers who already have shown faith in your product. While convincing the brand new takes lot of time. Moreover, your customers too are facing a similar economic downturn. The more you make them realize the authenticity of your product in fighting their losses, the more loyalty it brings in. However, you must remember the crisis is not going to last forever.

Tips To Control The Churn During the COVID Crisis

1. Educate Users Around Product Features and Solutions

During such hard-hit times focus on educating your customers about your product. Let them know which new features or services are profitable for their business during recent times. Explain to them the downside of not using the product. The more the users become familiar with your product(s) or services, the more they use it in their business or service. Every small profit or success that it brings to their business in this hour of crisis will satisfy customers. As a result, there are more chances of customer retention.

Use multi-channel communication to educate customers :

  • Customer education starts with a strong user onboarding program. Make sure to focus on customer’s needs and pain points. While explaining your product features talk about how their investment in your product or service will bring them maximum success.
  • Webinars help you to easily reach out to maximum customers. It also activates the new users. Throw up a webinar with support experts. Discuss with them how your product or service can let people retain their businesses amidst the pandemic. For example, conduct webinars to highlight which particular features are currently more in demand. And how users can make the best use of them during COVID.
  • Upgrade your website content with features pushed more towards the work-from-home teams. Keeping the COVID crunch in mind, dedicate articles to how your product or service can help remote customer service teams. You can also write about FAQs by users. Create help guides to guide teams on how they can work from home.

If you are able to increase your Customer Retention Rate(CCR) to 15% in week one, you make a 50% higher retention rate at week 10 and beyond.

2. Ensure Appropriateness Of Automation

Stay crystal clear about the type of automation you are using with respect to the customer. Definitely, human interaction is more valuable and you should help customers in the best way possible. But you can use automation for basic tasks that can be completed without human intervention.

For example, a user shows more interest in SMS related services in the demo. In that case, you send an automated email sequence that talks about the SMS feature as per his requirement. Make more customer engagements using the following automation.

  • Personalize your content, be it an automated email or SMS campaign
  • Use an Onboarding email automation to educate customers around particular feature(s) of their interest
  • Send out an SMS/email campaign to activate a  customer, like once every 3 days
  • Send automated customer welcome emails to new customers
  • Create customer feedback emails. Analyze how your customer feels soon after talking to your support rep over the call.

The right choice of automation at the right stage helped our support teams to pull back 20% of the users during COVID. When these users had approached, they already had made minds to leave our product. But staying in continuous contact with them using the right automation converted them into satisfied users.

Ensure appropriate automation- customer retention during COVID

3. Respond ASAP To Calm Your Angry Customers

One of the most important customer retention strategies is sending a quick response. Get back to your customers as quickly as possible. Making an angry customer wait longer than usual for the first response is a recipe for disaster. Also, never be in a rush to close the ticket. That poses a negative impact on customers as well as your budding relationship with them. Customers are already stressed with the pandemic. Now, step into your customer’s shoes and understand their pain points.

A whopping 73% of online customers believe that only good customer service values their time. And as per data, 53% of online customers are likely to abandon their purchase if they are not responded quickly.

The standard average response time to a customer is around 12 hours and 10 minutes, which is definitely not an ideal scenario for any business. Shorten your average response time to increase the level of quality customer service.

4. Re-engage Dormant Users

A number of users stop engaging with your product after some time. They either do not log in anymore. Or even if logged in, they do not spend enough time in the app as before. This is either because they have changed their minds or have changed their profession entirely. They do not find your product useful and interesting anymore.

Leveraging customer engagement programs should be your prime strategy now. Activate customers. The support team should focus on how many customers have you been able to actively engage and attract even during times as tough as the COVID. Two things that have so far proved to be very useful are :

  • Webinars: Webinars have provenly led to an increase in engagements. Webinars on a particular feature or service have shown that the number of customers increased for that specific feature.
  • Try different communication channels: It is seen that customers respond through their preferred channels of communication. Our team had sent out emails and SMSes to users who they found dormant since onboarding. They also approached via calls. Continuous reaching out by various channels now initiated responses from their side. However, some users responded quickly when addressed through emails while some preferred calls.

According to a new report from SmarterHQ, 72% of consumers say they now only engage with marketing messages that are personalized and tailored to their interests.

5. Keep Strong And Transparent Inter-Team Communication

Give your front-line folks the flexibility to perform plus convey. They should be able to communicate with the higher agents clearly. For example, it may so happen that an agent is unable to answer a query or finds difficulty in explaining the insights of a feature. In such a case, the agent should quickly escalate it to the manager and communicate the status of the conversation clearly.

Strong communication with other teams will assist the customer success team in helping the customer in the best way possible. For instance, the Sales team can share call related information and call recording with the Customer Success team. Information remains transparent and shared across teams.

6. Map Out Your Customer’s Journey

Every customer has a different experience with your brand. But of course, you can choose some common and standard touchpoints. You can map your customer’s journey going through these touchpoints.

First, segregate your customer base into groups based on age, demography, or on the basis of problems faced during COVID. Suppose, your support team finds that there are certain customers who have ceased to communicate during COVID soon after onboarding. Therefore, your team decides to map the 30-day response journey of each. It is found that customers contacted on Day 1 (the onboarding day). But as they proceed to Day 13, 14, and 15, the graph goes down. This graph improves only by sending follow-up emails, personalized SMSes, feedback emails, etc.

Thus tracing the journey map helps your agents to improve and provide a better experience. Your support agents should know ‘what impacts where?’ or ‘which response touches which pain point?’. 86% of senior-level marketers believe that a customer journey map is crucial, a study says.

A company relies on multiple channels and a chosen set of touchpoints for seamless customer service. A map can help identify when it is best to escalate a customer email to giving support on call. If your customer’s account is about to expire, send out a personalized email requesting for renewal.

7. Help Customer Proactively By Understanding Customer Behaviour around Product Usage

Analyze user behavior around the product. Which specific feature are they using? Whether or not they are using it? All these questions around product usage and customer behavior can be answered using a customer success tool.

Your team must proactively reach out to customers before the churn really happens. For example, your team can send an automated email of use cases around a similar business or by explaining a feature’s value in their business during COVID. This make it easy for the customer to connect the dots around their problem with your solution.

You can also proactively connect with your customers as per their feedback shared with you. Called as customer surveys, an NPS (Net Promoter Score) or a CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) score tells you how good or bad their experience has been with your service. For example, based on the score received, you can send an automated email that asks, “Are you facing any difficulty? Our agent will help you sort it out.”.

However, many companies follow up not only for feedback but also for giving loyalty bonuses and offers. A rare gift card or surprise credit points strengthens customer behavior around your product. It converts the customer into a long-term follower.

Don’t forget that your home-restricted customers will now want more proactive attention than before!

8. Empathetic Replies Restrict That Churn

An empathic reply is the best churn reduction strategy. You should equip your front-line agents with tools on how to handle requests like relief programs or cancellations. This should be a part of your go-to-market strategy. Several customers are going to leave by saying “we can’t afford” or ” we don’t see a value in your service” or “we restructured our company”. It’s a true fact that they have suffered a financial hit.

Your empathy will cool their frustration.

Help customers with paying a little later or pause their subscription. In other words, show them some love,

” We are there for those who want to cancel the subscription. We give a couple of months for free”, or

 “You can pause the subscription for the time being. We will take care that you aren’t charged any further. Stay safe.” 

You have to tackle with empathy any customer movement that indicates churn. However, let’s frankly accept that some churn is bound to happen. Be kind. If your reps stay positive, their service stays positive too. You may end your email on a positive note like,

“Be safe & looking forward to having you back with us in the near future.”

9. Reward Loyal Customers

Invest this time to appreciate your loyal customers. Give them pleasant experience now and not just a service. Continue winning their trust. Don’t just talk, sell, and leave. Especially in these hard times, there’s more to just deals and revenues. Stay back, engage, and reward. Give them more reasons to stick around your product. Remember, tough times won’t last long. But customers honored during these tough times definitely will. Moreover, upselling is always easier among loyal customers.

Support your loyal customers emotionally plus financially now. They have proved their loyalty by choosing to stick with your product over several others in the market. It’s your turn to reward them. Research depicts that 79% of consumers are more likely to keep doing business with a brand that has a loyalty program. Following that, develop your own customer loyalty programs by giving:

  • Discounts for a year-long membership if they sign up now.
  • Free trails
  • An installment in payments
  • Travel credits
  • Vouchers
  • Free shipping services
  • Extension of the money-back days – gives them time to decide.

10. Follow The Low Investment – High Impact Rule

How much does it cost you to be honest and polite with your customers? As already said, this is the time to strengthen the bond with your clients. Never before you must have got such captive customers who comparatively can spend more time fidgeting with your product or service.

One, do not over-promise and be honest. Do not promise something that you can’t deliver just to keep back the customer. Tell them that you too are equally hit. Accept if you have missed something. If they leave, let them but on good terms. A HubSpot Research found that, in cases of company error, 96% of survey respondents continued buying services from the previous company if they apologized and rectified the situation.

Two, motivate your customers. Like, keep them hooked up with a list of latest feature releases to fight the COVID downturn. Share with them your current scenario, wins, and losses. Bring back their lost interest.

And Three, follow up for feedback.

Over To You!

Retaining customers during this COVID slowdown is the need of the hour. How are you going to save yourself from the churn cutting your revenues from below? The answer to this is the right customer retention strategies.

It is seen that the one who is able to cater to customer’s needs with empathy retains the maximum –  in the long run. The right set of customer retention strategies is important. But more important is the correct implementation of these customer retention strategies.

Let us know which churn reduction strategies are you using to retain customers during this crisis?

Anushree is a seasoned business leader with nearly two decades of experience in the SaaS industry, specializing in customer-facing roles across the globe. As the driving force behind our Customer Success division, she is committed to fostering a culture of customer-centricity within her team. Dedicated to maintaining a high-impact Customer Success function, Anushree serves as a vital conduit for open communication channels for customers, capturing invaluable customer feedback and aligning it with our product vision. Her focus on seamless customer experience ensures that customers enjoy a rewarding journey from start to finish.

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