Mel Feller Customer Retention Strategies And Referrals For Your Internet Business by Mel Feller

Mel Feller Customer Retention Strategies And Referrals For Your Internet Business by Mel Feller

For any business, that provides a product or service to customers, the act of finding, targeting and obtaining new customers is always going to be among its top priorities.  This even includes our online businesses.

However, what many businesses tend to forget is that once a customer makes the first purchase, there is much more to be done in the customer relationship. Smart businesses know that the first purchase is really just the beginning, and that the real business value lies in retaining that customer.

Mel Feller Offer Great Customer Service Tips and Advice by Mel Feller

Great businesses can foster lasting customer relationships by asking the question, “What’s the #1 way my organization can improve customer retention?”

First, I believe, that to retain customers, retailers have to go beyond price and selection. What they need to do is the following:

Retailers can create that environment by developing a relevant and authentic employee brand that employees can connect with. The 2013 Gallup study about employee engagement describes a U.S. workforce with only 30% of employees engaged in their work, with active disengagement costing the American economy an estimated $450-550 billion per year.

More and more companies are looking to turn this tide and are taking advantage of their marketing resource closest to the customer – their employees – by giving their employees a reason to care, and clearly defining their mission and values and the role each employee plays in retaining their customer base.

Truly engaged workers – passionate brand advocates to all they meet are inspired by where the company is headed and are compelled to share that passion with customers by delivering great customer service and interaction. This connects the company’s brand story from the inside out – from employees to consumers. When the brand experience is authentic and compelling at every touchpoint, you will create brand ambassadors within your own ranks that goes beyond 9-5.

Second, understand and measure why your customers or clients are leaving in the first place.  You can’t solve a problem if you don’t understand to what extent it exists or why it exists. Once that information is understood, the strategy is simple and should really be threefold:

·         Treat your customers/clients like people. The internet is a wonderful thing, but making an effort to relate to your clients/customers on a personal level is often the difference between a sustainable business and one that is here today, gone tomorrow.

·         Appreciate your clients/customers. Thank you notes, thank you gifts for onboarding new clients and/or discounts to your most loyal customers can speak volumes. Even something as simple as recognition on social media for your most loyal customers can be valuable.

·         Welcome and ask for constructive feedback. Let your customers know that their voice is heard. Do not wait for negative feedback to come to you, proactively reach out to your customers on a regular basis to find out what they like and what they think you can improve on.

Thirdly, in my experience, customer retention and loyalty can only be achieved when organizations show strong employee loyalty.

Organizations that treat their employees with respect, give them the necessary tools to do their job and continually demonstrate that they are appreciated will see a workforce that will go the extra mile for the customers they serve. Unhappy, frustrated workers have little reason to put in the effort. Why should they? If employees don’t feel valued, work becomes drudgery and customers are seen as just part of the daily grind.

Simply put, an appreciated employee is a happy employee. Moreover, happy employees translate into happy customers and thus bigger profits for the company. The research shows this to be true:

A Jackson Organization (now HealthStream Research) study shows that companies that effectively appreciate employee value enjoy a return on equity and assets more than triple that experienced by firms that do not.

Here are simple suggestions on how to keep employees happy and providing great customer service:

Acknowledging how your employees are doing something right is a far more successful path to work excellence, than pointing out what they are doing wrong. Psychology has long proven that people respond far better to positive feedback than to negative. By consistently letting your employees know what they are doing right; you keep employees on the right track since people are likely to repeat behaviors they have been praised for. This means less customer complaints and higher customer satisfaction.

Check in with your employees to make sure they have what they need to do their job successfully. Giving your employees the right resources (whether training, equipment) improves their ability to provide customers with the services they expect.

Fourth, finding new and unique ways to create a partnership with customers. People will care when they share. Help customers put skin in the game by the following:

·         Involving them in the design and delivery of service

·         Soliciting their ideas and suggestions

·         Begging for feedback on ways to improve their experience

·         Create forums for customer participation (like boards of customers, customer advisory teams, VOC initiatives)

·         Spend time with customers on their turf or neutral turf (like Harley’s HOG—Harley Owners Group)

·         Crafting chat rooms aimed at beta testing, experimenting, piloting products and services with customers.

·         Invite customers to company functions—picnics, meetings, social outings, etc.

Fifth, I would recommend that you focus on the entire experience of their customers.

While experts debate whether the marketing funnel is outdated, it has been proven that managing the entire experience of any age of customer is a better way to keep customers. The conversation cannot stop once the sale is made.. It is critical that companies focus on sending personal communications throughout the lifecycle of the customer. In today’s competitive environment, it is not enough to rely on service or repairs to hold on to customers.

For example, the welcome message is a critical it is one of the single most important communications businesses can send. Customers are five times more likely to engage with you in the first 90-100 days than at any other point. Therefore, it is very important that you dialogue with them at the onset not just at the end.

Technology allows you to adopt a Customer Lifecycle Management (CLM) approach in a very cost-effective way. Personal customer microsites or creating personal URLs, or PURLs, are perfect for automating these types of communications. Using business rules, you can create relevant interactions by customizing the content for each customer. Companies that learn how to combine the power of the online world and their customer data to own the customer relationship have a much higher retention rate.

Today’s consumers are growing less responsive to mass marketing messages. Younger buyers are known for their skeptical and demanding attitude. Old-fashioned relationship building will never go out of style.

Sixth, treat the act of keeping customers as important as it is to getting them!

In the marketing world, retention is boring and optimization especially around acquiring new customers is sexy. The problem, I think, is too many organizations have been overly inspired by Alec Baldwin’s classic “Always Be Closing” speech in the film Glengarry Glen Ross. I do not believe you “close” a sale—you “open” a relationship. The sales transaction is the start of the relationship, not the end. Organizations would improve retention if they simply banished the idea of “closing.”

Effective marketing is an equilibrium it is the equal balance of getting customers, and keeping them. If you only ever hear your sales and marketing teams talking about getting new customers, then they’re only doing half their jobs.

Seventh, offer a simple way to pay.

Too often, organizations will hyperlink to landing pages that then require you to fill out your billing and shipping information every time they purchase. Some require their customers to remember usernames and passwords or figure out annoying Captchas.

The easier it is to pay or donate, the more people will do it. Organizations will capture a new revenue because the people who abandoned their shopping cart at that last step will actually be able to experience a frictionless, quick payment process. Retain those impulse purchases!

For example, 39% of email recipients will read their email on a smartphone and then click through to the website. However, only 13% of those online transactions are actually completed

Payment technologies such as Pay, PayPal, Vento, or Google Wallet are simplifying the purchasing experience. Make your customer’s life easier and they will keep coming back.

Eighth, I believe that as a business you build the customer and not the sale.

For businesses who are trying to sell their product, it is important to make a customer feel like they care about them even after they purchase. This will make all the difference in building a strong and lasting relationship with that customer. Building strong relationships is the most important driver when it comes to customer retention rates. If customers feel like they are just a sale, they will go somewhere else without a second thought. If they feel that they have built a relationship with a business, they are more likely to come back a second and third time.

On the business side, it is important to keep detailed notes about your customers. If you have more than one person working on your customer service team and interacting with overlapping customers, they need to be able to communicate quickly and look at each-other’s notes. The worst thing you can do is lose a customer by not recognizing them as important.

If you make customers feel important and spend time building relationships with them, you will have high retention rates over an extended amount of time. If you like, your customers and your customer like you back, this also means that they are more likely to recommend your business to their friends.

Ninth, getting customers to come back repeatedly can be difficult, especially in a world of fierce competition and customer service stories being shared online. We live in a time where just providing a great product or service is usually not enough to keep them coming back. Here are a few ways companies can improve customer retention:

·         Give great service. Customer retention is fickle when customer service is lacking. Make sure the customer is dealt with promptly, courteously and efficiently. Listen to their needs and meet them as efficiently as possible. Customers will remember this, but they will remember bad service even more.

·         Be quick to resolve issues. Not every product works exactly right and sometimes paid services don¹t meet expectations. Accept that when the customer¹s expectations haven¹t been met, you must work hard to make sure the issues are resolved to their satisfaction. They will remember this and they will feel like their purchases are safe with you next time.

·         Keep in touch. Gather contact data on your customers when you can, and keep it current. Reach out to them with special offers or new products and services, or just send them a birthday card. Use any excuse to keep your company in their minds.

·         Reward loyalty. Everyone, occasionally, should treat a loyal customer with a free product or special discount just for being a loyal customer. You¹ll be surprised at the goodwill this will engender.

·         Thank your customers. Chances are you have competitors in your category and that means your customers have options. The fact that they chose you, whether or not because of your pricing or reputation or convenience, is something that you appreciate, so show it. Thank them. Thank them every time for choosing you and let them know in words and deeds how important your business is to them, regardless of whether they¹re your smallest customer or your largest.

Finally, the cliché would be to deliver great service. However, more helpful is the following:

Continue to evolve your offerings with your customers’ progress.

Do you have a next step for them when they are done with what you are helping them with now? Do you have another upsell? How else can you help them?

Develop more products and services and show them how they can go further. This works with both B2B and B2C- in B2B it is about taking them to the next level of achievement. In B2C it’s about furthering or deepening the experience. In both cases, ask yourself and your customers “Where are you headed? What are you getting out of this? How could you go even further?”

You will notice that nowhere in this article did I say, “the customer is always right.”

There is a reason for that. Sometimes, the customer is not only wrong, but has crossed a line. There is no excuse for abusive behavior, for example.

Set clear boundaries for customer support. There is no requirement that you have to accept being abused or harassed, and it goes without saying that you should never let employees be abused or harassed.

So, no, the customer is not always right.

The customer is, however, always human. Keeping that in mind can help you develop and communicate empathy, which can quickly pacify unhappy customers.

Be open, be honest and actively seek customer feedback.  Be prepared to take action on customer feedback while jumping on customer issues as soon as you are aware that they exist.

I personally know that if you do this and your customers will fall in love with you.  I hope this helps!