What Is Customer Retention and Why Is It Important?
Customer retention is keeping existing buyers returning to your business for extended periods of time. It is turning a 1 time purchaser into a loyal repeat customer. In other words, it is retaining customers so that they don’t transfer to a competitor.
The importance of customer retention can’t be overstated. To begin with it is an excellent way to gauge how well your company is providing its products and services. A company with good retention rates is doing a good job in serving their customers.
Customer retention is also a big factor in your company’s bottom line. Here are some customer retention statistics collected by Invesp that demonstrate the importance of customer retention to businesses.
- It costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one
- The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70% while the probability of selling to a new customer is 5-20%
- Existing customers spend 31% more than new customers
- Increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25-95%
Clearly retaining customer’s loyalty is something every business should focus on.
Secrets of Improving Your Customer Retention
There are a variety of methods that companies use to improve customer retention. Loyalty programs and bonus offers work with varying degrees of success. However, the real key to customer retention is providing a good customer experience.
Customer experience is made up of all the interactions that a customer has with a business. An example of an interaction between a customer and your business is when they purchase a product but this may not even be their first interaction with your company. Product research, visiting your website, calling customer support and any other contact that the customer has with your business all add up to the overall customer experience.
For your business to improve customer retention, you need to focus on providing the best service and support possible at every point where a customer interacts with your company. Managing customer retention will involve collecting and tracking data at different customer touch points and getting customer feedback so you can improve customer experience at every point of contact. This can be accomplished by having your own customer retention department.
Improve Customer Loyalty with a Remote Customer Retention Team
There is no doubt that a customer care team retention center can help improve customer loyalty but building a team can be difficult and time consuming. A good alternative is to hire a remote customer retention team.
A customer retention team will help your business by providing services that improve customer loyalty. Here are some of the customer loyalty services that a customer retention specialist can provide for your company
Client Onboarding
If you want to see customer loyalty improvement, client onboarding is a good way to build lasting relationships with customers. A client services onboarding specialist can tailor an onboarding process that suits your particular product/service. Onboarding may include sending personalized emails to new customers, assisting with product setup, providing training, informing clients of updates to the product and more. The point is to demonstrate to the client that you care about their success; not just getting a sale.
Feedback Management
Customer feedback management involves gathering information provided by customers to learn their level of satisfaction with your product and service. Generating brief surveys at different points of contact is one method of getting customer feedback. This information can be used by your customer care service agents to improve service where problems are identified.
Invoice Management
Even things like customer invoice management can affect customer retention. A study by YouGov found that 50% of people who regularly shop online will cancel their purchase if their preferred payment method isn’t available. Other factors such as how overdue payments are billed can also affect customer retention.
Customer Service
If you want a loyal customer service is the key. A customer service retention specialist will provide fast and efficient responses to all customer requests. Some of their responsibilities will be to resolve customer queries and issues, handle customer complaints, escalate problems to the proper departments and enter information on customer interactions into the system. In your call center customer retention can be affected by all interaction with agents. Every customer service agent should be helping to improve customer retention.
Customer Retention Outsourcing: Reasons to Start Immediately
Working on your customer retention isn’t something you should put off. Here are some reasons why you should start using a customer retention outsourcing provider right away.
- Increase sales: loyal customers spend more money than new customers. As mentioned above they spend 31% more money on average than new customers. In addition to spending more per purchase, loyal customers also buy more frequently. Increased sales alone make it worth hiring a customer loyalty and engagement specialist to improve customer retention.
- Lower expenses: it costs a lot more to acquire a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. Keeping your existing customers is cost effective in that while you will spend less to keep them; they actually spend more on average than new customers.
- More feedback: feedback from customers helps you to improve your sales pipeline, provide better customer service and even make improvements to your products. Your regular customers who purchase from you frequently are more likely to respond to surveys and provide other feedback that helps you to improve your business.
- Gain new customers: referrals from loyal customers are one of the best ways to get new clients. Family and friends provide a strong influence when it comes to people making purchasing decisions. Conversely, customers that you lose to poor service will have an adverse affect on customer referrals.
- Less sensitive to price: loyal customers become fans of your brand. When they know you provide good quality and service they are often willing to pay a little more for your product than look for a cheaper price at a competitor.
- Keep customers from leaving: losing a customer is never good for your business. Customer retention is all about keeping your existing customers happy so they don’t leave you for one of your competitors.
Our Company Can Provide Your Customer Retention Team
We are a Ukrainian based company that can help you build a customer retention team. With our access to a large talent pool we can find a customer loyalty specialist that meets your requirements. The agents we hire come from diverse industries and have extensive experience working with different CRMs. Every client retention specialist we hire is thoroughly vetted to verify their qualifications and ensure they meet your requirements. When we build a customer retention team for you it is tailored to fit your specific needs and consists of only the best agents, committed to improving customer retention rates in your business.
The procedure we use for recruiting and hiring customer retention specialists produces good results. Here are the steps we go through when hiring a customer retention agent.
- Discussions regarding your specific needs: we communicate with you via your preferred channel to establish your specific customer retention needs.
- Review of talent pool: the resumes of the best qualified customer retention specialists matching your requirements are forwarded to you for review.
- Final selection process: you conduct interviews of your preferred candidates. You may also administer a test to assist you in your final decision if you prefer.
- Hiring details: we establish a workflow and determine a starting date. Once the service agreement is signed, everything is set and ready to go.
Advantages of Partnering with Ukrainian Customer Retention Specialists
A growing number of companies have been choosing Ukraine as their outsourcing destination. So what is it about Ukrainian customer retention specialists that makes companies want to work with them?
- Educated and experienced talent pool: there are hundreds of universities and colleges in Ukraine producing thousands of graduates every year. Specialists you hire from Ukraine come from diverse industries and many of them have experience working with foreign companies.
- Geographic location puts them in a convenient time zone: there is only a one hour time difference between Ukraine and most of Western Europe. In addition, working hours in Ukraine overlap with those in parts of North America. This makes communicating with your team much easier.
- Multilingual professionals: a large number of professionals in Ukraine are fluent in English. Many of them speak other languages as well which can be helpful in customer retention.
- Good price-to-skills ratio: the salary for a customer retention agent in Ukraine is significantly less than for an agent in Western Europe and North America with similar qualifications. Ukrainian specialists offer a great price/skills ration