Customer experience is an important consideration for any business trying to retain its existing customers, which in turn leads to growth. With recent patterns indicating customers are leaving in large numbers, it is more important than ever for businesses to look at how the situation can be improved.
The challenge of customer retention can be tackled head-on by utilizing the available resources in the best possible way. The idea is that with a change in mindset and data-driven practices, long-term customer retention can be an achievable goal.
Let’s look at some ways companies can put the brakes on the churn and target growth.
Prioritize the customer
It is well known that getting new customers is harder and costlier than keeping existing ones. In order to retain existing clients, customer engagement in every interaction has to be top-notch. To keep their experience from turning sour, a business’s marketing and sales teams need to have a measure of customer expectations all through their buying journey. Filling the gaps between expectations and the delivered experience is key to preventing churn.
In practice, that means organizations need to develop a customer-centric policy and utilize technologies like CRM to personalize customer engagement every step of the way from lead generation to retention. This may include creating data points for engagement as well as sentiment indicators and using AI-powered intelligence metrics to predict beforehand when a customer is at risk of turning away.
Take the Data-Driven Approach
One of the biggest challenges for organizations in staying on top of the customer experience is the management of information that can help in clear decision-making. The disjointed data from sales, marketing and service teams can be a major hurdle for business owners in formulating a cohesive strategy for customer retention.
This creates a need to combine relevant information on a single platform that is accessible to all stakeholders. A well organized CRM software with data-driven, actionable insights can form the basis of a unified response aimed at improving the customer experience.
Improve Lead Analysis
Poor quality leads generated by the marketing department are the Achilles heel of most organizations’ sales performance. Under-qualified leads imply that quantity trumps quality, and good opportunities get lost in the shuffle. A lot of leads may even go unanswered.
If businesses can engage the right leads the first time, there will be less time wasted on customers with lower potential for long term business. This necessitates the need to formulate a well-defined set of attributes that indicate whether a lead is worth pursuing. Marketing and Sales both have a unique perspective on what a customer needs. With a combined effort to better score opportunities and track conversions, higher quality lead generation will lead to low churn in the long term.
Improve Organizational Alignment
One of the ways to improve customer retention is to make sure all the teams are on the same page about the organization’s customer experience goals. Often, two teams are working with different sets of information and pursuing different KPI targets, which can lead to inconsistent experiences for the customer in their journey.
It is not uncommon to have a disparity in the technology used by two teams, which indicates a complete lack of cohesion.
It is imperative for businesses to align sales and marketing components such that there are common terms and definitions of metrics, as well as a mutual understanding of which KPIs are the most important, in order to deliver a consistently great customer experience.
One way to make this happen is with a comprehensive CRM that can separate functionalities for different teams, while still maintaining a common set of customer experience indicators. A better experience all around means a higher chance of long term relationships with clients.
Let the Platform Work for You
Looking ahead, the customer experience journey is set to be based on data-driven, analytic systems that indicate common goals for the organization based on what the customers need. Let technology work for you by leveraging the benefits provided by modern-day CRMs to cover all your bases and overcome common hurdles in creating an outstanding customer experience.
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