Eric Dalius speaks about the ways of improving customer retention

To ensure the better longevity of your business, you must focus on customer retention with a bit more seriousness than adding new customers. Having a solid base of loyal customers is the elixir of business. Not paying attention to customer retention will keep you on the tenterhooks as you ride the roller coaster while trying to acquire new customers, explains Eric Dalius.

Giving too much effort and attention to new customer acquisition will distract you from the core business activities and slow down the momentum. Moreover, the money spent on getting new customers is 5 times more than what you would spend on retaining customers. Customer retention is another name for brand loyalty, and we will now discuss how to improve this most crucial aspect of a business.

Find the reasons for losing customers, says Eric Dalius

Before you create any plan for customer retention, first look at the customer retention rate. If you regularly lose customers, it is a reason for worry, and if the trend continues, you should first try to understand the cause for customers leaving you. Then, on knowing the reasons, you can devise a plan to overcome the lacunae in dealing with customers and work to improve customer experience.

One way to know why customers desert you is to ask for their feedback to understand their complaints. Work to address these to improve customer satisfaction and bring them back to your business while encouraging repetitive purchases.  

Be a good listener

Inviting customers to speak out their minds would mean that you are ready to listen to everything they have to say and duly acknowledge it.  Never be in denial mode when going through the feedback. Negative customer feedback and criticism can be hard to deal with, but learning to handle it with care will help improve customer experience that reflects better business performance, believes Eric Dalius. Consider the feedback as a performance indicator and work towards its improvement. Having an arrangement for displaying a survey soon upon canceling an account is a standard method for collecting customer feedback. The timing of the survey encourages honest feedback as the customer’s experience and emotions will genuinely reflect in the comments.

Improve customer experience

Customer retention rate is a derivative of customer experience that encourages repeat purchases. Poor customer relationships and poor treatment are the primary reasons for customers dissociating from the business.

Customer experience betterment based on customer feedback or survey is already covered. The other way to improve customer experience is to work on some specific areas of your business that will help meet customer expectations better and lead to a more pleasing customer experience.

Look at the customer onboarding process that must include proper guidance and training about using your product effectively.  Suppose you have a robust onboarding process that inducts customers with the assurance of the most comfortable experience and demonstrates it during the subsequent interactions. In that case, there are high chances of these customers turning loyal.

In addition, focusing on a positive customer experience and customer services should pay rich dividends in customer loyalty.