Losing a customer is defined as a customer who either cancels their account or stops subscribing to a service. Also known as churn, this is a problem many businesses face. It’s problematic in that acquiring new customers requires a bigger investment of time and money than it takes to retain your existing customers. Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to keep your churn rate at a minimum.
Make Engagement Easy
Our lives are difficult enough without having to struggle as consumers. Research has shown that the vast majority of consumers value the ease of the shopping experience over deals and bargains. Especially when it comes to dealing with your business online, they want an easy shopping experience coupled with an efficient way to communicate with customer service personnel. If you can provide a more pleasant experience, you’re already giving customers what they want.
Look for New Ways to Engage Your Customers
By maintaining a blog on your website, you have a forum for communicating with your customers, but that’s only half the battle. The information you share on your blog has to be entertaining, informative, and useful to your customers. Consider posting tutorials, little known facts about your products, and other useful information. You can increase engagement by asking your customers to subscribe to a weekly newsletter. By highlighting your recent blog posts in the newsletter, you can drive your customers back to your site on a weekly basis.
You can often reverse your customer churn by reaching out to your former customers. When you identify a customer that hasn’t engaged with your business in awhile, send them an email. You can ask for feedback, or simply remind them of the advantages to maintaining a loyal account. This can sometimes be enough to encourage past customers to return to the fold. Even if they don’t return, their feedback may help you pinpoint ways to keep other customers from departing. For instance, if a former customer comments that your customer service team takes too long to respond, improving response times can help you keep future customers happier.
Some business give a free gift for orders over a certain amount, while other businesses include coupons for future purchases with every order. What you offer may depend on the type and size of your business, but you should try to give a little something extra with each purchase. Giving your customers more than they expect will help them feel valued as customers and encourage them to buy from your business more frequently.
Looking several generations back, customers and business owners had regular live interactions. Often, store owners would stroll about their stores and engage customers in conversation. That may be more challenging today, but there are still ways you can personalize service for each customer. Adding a handwritten note to orders is one idea. Additionally, many businesses have started using data analytics to recognize the shopping patterns of individual customers. This can help you customize the experience for each shopper, offering them insight and discounts on the items they buy most often. When you can make each customer feel important through this type of personalization, you’ll be less likely to lose them to your competitors.
These practices can help you reduce your customer churn rate, but your success will depend on how diligently you follow through. This should be an ongoing process, so you can ensure your customers are consistently engaging with your business. If you can keep them involved, they’ll be less likely to abandon you for a competitor.
