Businesses strive to attract customers and build a solid customer-base. After all, the customers are those who purchase from the business, and essentially run it.
Businesses put a lot of focus towards attracting customers. They utilize various strategies such as marketing and social media. If you are a small business, then this has probably been a main focus of yours. Getting customers is one thing, but what about actually keeping them, and getting them to come back?
This is known as customer retention. It is essentially a measurement of customer loyalty, or the rate at which your customers stay with your business over a period of time.
As a small business, there are various strategies you can use to grow your business. Among those, customer retention is one of the most important. It reduces the time and effort (and funding) needed to continually reach customers. Additionally, they can even increase your revenue.
Here are 5 ways to increase customer retention as a small business:
- Incentivize loyalty
- Offer fast and reliable customer support
- Utilize existing data
- Create a strong onboarding experience for customers
- Offer fast delivery with returns
1. Incentivize loyalty
The central idea of customer retention is loyalty. Thus, it is important to retain customers by incentivizing them and offering discounts for recurring purchases. This can be done through various methods.
The first of these is by a loyalty program. This is a great way to increase purchase frequency. Loyalty programs motivate returning customers to make additional purchases to earn rewards.
The next method is by a referral program. This utilizes word-of-mouth and motivates existing customers to instigate others to interact with your business.
The final method worth mentioning is email marketing. Email marketing is a marketing channel that sends messages to your customers. It lets businesses offer products and services directly.
2. Offer fast and reliable customer support
If you are a customer who has had a bad experience with a business, then chances are that you are not coming back. Having a fast and reliable customer support system is crucial for customer retention.
Customer support systems offer a way of communication and solutions to customers who may have a problem. This can turn a question or complaint into a sale.
With emerging technologies, even small businesses can offer sound customer support systems with a small employee-base. For example, you can utilize artificial intelligence to create a chatbot to act as a live chat for anyone who may have questions.
3. Utilize existing data
Utilizing existing data is an excellent way to determine the next best step for your business. For customer retention, it can help you figure out what went wrong and what went wrong with your customer’s experience.
Figure out what made customers leave and how long they stayed. Data such as this can give valuable insight on the effectiveness of your marketing plan and website/store functionality.
4. Create a strong onboarding experience for customers
As a business, your first impression is everything. Making a good impression will not only increase the likelihood for a sale, but will also increase the chances of that customer coming back.
It is important to have a vast self-serve knowledge base at the ready. It is basically an organized collection of information product, service, or topic. This is normally provided in the form of frequently-asked-questions, or FAQs.
Minimize and eliminate any hiccups in their initial onboarding, such as poor customer service or misinformation. These can leave a negative perception of your business in customers’ minds.
5. Offer fast delivery with returns
As we just discussed, customer experience is everything.
I am sure that you can agree that no one likes waiting long for their orders. Fast delivery is vital to a positive experience. According to data, 17% of customers will not purchase again if met with a late delivery once, and 55% of customers will not purchase again if met with a late delivery two to three times.
33% of customers will abandon a business if they felt that they had a difficult return experience. Offering an easy and just return system will make customers happier, and are likely to bring them back.
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