Make Customers Come Back - Winning Customer Retention Strategies Customer Retention marketing is a tactically-driven strategy to keep relationships with customers going and increase customer interest. This strategy relies on the study of customer behavior. Here are the basic tenets of a marketer that seeks to increase customer retention: 1. Past and Current customer behavior This is the best predictor of how customers will behave in the future. They are the characteristics marketers should most often look at. Analyzing customer tendencies and trends allows the marketer to anticipate, if not predict, the customers reaction to different situations. The marketer must take note that behavior is action oriented, not a description. For example, …show more content…
Lost customers will probably never come back. And to top that, they spread negative publicity about you. On the other hand, customers that are happy attract more customers to your service or product. Customer retention, therefore, should be an integral part of any business plan. Customer Retention: Integrating Lifetime Value into Marketing Strategies by Arthur Middleton Hughes Everyone wants to retain their existing customers. Few companies, however, are implementing positive strategies aimed at retention. Most companies are organized for acquisition. Their advertising and sales programs are designed to find and promote their products and services to new customers. The companies are organized on a product or brand basis, not on a customer segment basis. While they all have customer service departments, and most have a customer service toll free number, they lack an integrated marketing strategy that is directed at retention,
and that defines retention as the measurement of success. In this article, we will explore the meaning of a retention strategy, showing how it can be set up, and how lifetime value can be used to measure it. You have often heard it said that "It is five times more profitable to spend your marketing dollars to retain the customers that you have than to use the dollars to beat the bushes for new customers." Most people would agree with this statement, even though they have no way of proving it. Indeed, the majority of large
Many different alternatives exist to face the customer retention problem. One good alternative would be to use and develop a strong customer relation management strategy. With the information collected from the customer loyalty system, the company needs to develop a customer relation service. To improve the perceived value of the brand, the company should create a very developed customer service with a dedicated customer service number and an easy way to order cars. In the airports and main retail places, the company should develop a specific office/desk dedicated to the premium customers and those who have loyalty cards. So that, the consumers don’t lose time and can enjoy of a best quality service.
This will not only retain the existing customers but will also attract new ones to increase the customer base to optimal level.
Even with marketing efforts there’s always a level of defection due to a new competitor entering the market or boredom, or simply customers moving away to a new location. The best way to prevent defection and increase retention is to make your customers satisfied, as satisfied customers = Loyal Customer.
Losing a customer means a lot more than losing a sale, it means losing the entire future stream of purchases that the customer would make over a lifetime of patronage. There are a number of reasons why a customer may stop buying from a company; very often though that reason is linked to poor customer service as opposed to something inherently wrong with the brand itself. Customer relationships give companies a competitive edge based on the merit that if consumers are happy more often than not those consumers will continue to do business with said company. A recent study conducted by TD Canada’s customer loyalty poll asked consumers which form of appreciation are
keep an existing customer than finding new ones. A major part of the customer service, especially in a retailing
Retention is a reflection of a customer’s willingness to remain with a particular company’s service or products and is useful to measure customer loyalty. The relationship
Every company wants to make money and bring in customers, but what about making loyal customers out of them so they continue to come back? How do you even bring in potential new customers and turn them into loyal customers to begin with? The lifetime value of a customer is a predicted value of net profit credited to the total future relationship of a customer. We want to know the financial value of each customer so that we know how much to spend in marketing when looking for new customers and the potential of profits back from the money in advertising spent. The grocery store chain must start looking at customers and how to make them happy and loyal in the long run, as opposed to how to boost sales right now. From the Marketing Management book, a well-known rule states that 80 percent or more of a firm’s profits come from the top 20 percent of its customers. Thus, we want to focus on brining in new customers with successful marketing and turning them into loyal returning customers.
This is an important part of the long-term growth potential; weed out those customers who are more effort-intensive and seek to increase their value to the company or reduce their impact on the workforce; have them buy more or don’t sell to them. This area also focuses on customers who spend more with competitors, so efforts might sway their loyalty. It’s all about customer lifetime value.
How to maintain higher client retention in order to secure a more committed clientele that do not seek a competitor’s service in the future.
Customers enable the organization to treat each customer in a different way on the basis of the contribution they make towards the firm (Kleinaltenkamp & Wengler, 2007). The analysis of customer lifetime value aids the organization to rank and order customers on the basis of their contribution to organization’s revenues. It also helps the organization to determine as to how much it can invest in retaining customers to gain positive returns on the investment.
Customer loyalty is much harder to obtain that customer service satisfaction. The most important first step is to satisfy the customer by meeting their expectations. Customers only give a company one chance and if they aren’t satisfied they will not do business with that company again, as well as tell others of their experience. The next step would be to exceed the customer’s expectations. If a business goes above and beyond to assist the customer they begin to build loyalty. The next step is to truly surprise the customer. In order to dominate the marketplace the company must find a way to make them selves stand out with their product or service, accompanied with phenomenal customer service. Once this has been done customer satisfaction and loyalty will be gained. “Acquiring a new customer can cost four or five times more than keeping a current customer” (Bestmark, 2013). So it’s essential to keep the current customer’s happy and coming back for more.
It is imperative to satisfy customers and give them an amazing experience at the company. While it cost less to sell to existing customers and companies can increase profit by selling to the same customers; if customers are satisfied, there is more chance they will come back for more services or products. Satisfied customers are a free marketing for the company. However, it is the opposite if customers are dissatisfied. Dissatisfied customer will tell 8 to 10 people about his or her experience (O’Brien, A & Marakas, G. 2004). If by any reason, representatives see that the customer is not satisfy, they should act fast and fix the problem. Furthermore, there is more chance for sale representatives to sell to an existing customer that to a new customer. A good strategy for customer retention is to reward good customers. Companies can easily do
The success of a business depends upon its ability to attract and retain customers that are
Omnico’s customer retention is much lower than industry average. The problem as perceived by long time employee and current sales manager is that his salespeople fail to appreciate the importance of relationship selling. The sales manager’s solution is to have his sales force spend time on the golf course with customers in order to build relationships. Some of the sales people believe this is not the answer to the problem and feel this tactic is out dated and not going to have
Customer retention is the activity that a selling organization undertakes in order to reduce customer defections. Successful customer retention starts with the first contact an organization has with a customer and continues throughout the entire lifetime of a relationship. A company’s ability to attract and retain new customers, is not only related to its product or services, but strongly related to the way it services its existing customers and the reputation it creates within and across the marketplace.