The 5 Keys to Customer Retention You Need to Know

Author: Christine Golden

Posted: Mar 13, 2017

Is there anything brands want more than happy customers – customers willing to tell their friends about your great company, quality products and exceptional service? Word of mouth is the cheapest form of marketing. However, turning your customers into brand ambassadors is putting the cart before the horse. First, you must focus on customer retention.

Here are five keys to retaining customers, so you can turn them into advocates later:

Don’t get complacent.
When you’ve closed the sale and secured a customer, it’s not the time to stop communicating with them. Ask for feedback. Measure satisfaction. Put yourself in their shoes often, and continuously work to improve the customer experience or refine your offering to meet their needs.
Reward their loyalty.
Your customers likely have dozens of other options they could work with, but they chose you. If you want to keep them coming back, offer special perks or a loyalty program. LOFT is great at this; on top of quality clothing and great sales, it provides special offers via email, discounts in your birthday month and coupons almost anytime you use your LOFT MasterCard.
Send them relevant content.
Aren’t we all overwhelmed by the amount of emails and ads we see in a day? The last thing your customers need is one more message that doesn’t apply to them. So, tailor content to them using data you’ve gathered. Be proactive about bringing solutions to their attention that fit their lifestyle, but that they might not have considered yet.
Show some personality.
Customers rarely get excited about interacting with some big, stuffy corporation. Brands are born from the internal culture of an organization. So, do the work to understand the people who make up your company and what you can truly deliver. Define and demonstrate your brand’s personality through all touchpoints with customers. And just like any good human, be helpful, humble and quick to accept responsibility for your mistakes. It makes your company feel more approachable.
Emphasize quality customer service.
Acquiring new customers is much harder than keeping ones you already have. Nothing will motivate them to explore your competitors more than receiving bad customer service. So, don’t devalue the work done to secure them by failing to follow-through in service. Earn their business every day.