Sales want more leads; execs want more customers. A common response to this need for a lot of businesses is to target most of their outreach and marketing efforts towards new customers, as a path to increase revenues. Seems logical, right?
Not quite.
Retention is actually the name of the game when the times of difficult customer acquisition has come.
Acquiring new customers does not necessarily equate to a greater increase in your overall revenue generation, especially if customer retention is not a priority. What’s more, closing new customers takes longer, and is up to twenty-five times more expensive than upselling to existing customers. This is because your existing customers already know your brand and have expressed interest in what you offer; they’ve already chosen you once, making them much more likely to do so again.
In times like these, where acquisition can be made difficult by a volatile market and cautious prospects, retention should be your number one focus.
Read on the learn 5 ways you can drive higher customer retention for your business.
Quick links
- Start with a great onboarding experience
- Tailor offers specific to your clients’ needs
- Talk to your customers
- Help them save money
- Guide your clients through big changes in their lives
1. Start with a great onboarding experience
Properly serving customers should be the goal of any successful business; exceeding their expectations in a way that they continue to return is the key to healthy retention rates.
A delightful onboarding experience is a good place to start in order to achieve this.
You only have one chance at making a great first impression.
Reducing friction is key to making onboarding as seamless as possible, and auto-fill comes in handy early in this process. Indeed, by allowing customers to auto-fill their information — information that they probably share often, such as their names, addresses, phone numbers, account numbers — you let them save precious time and get the process done more quickly.
2. Tailor offers specific to your clients’ needs
Customer retention requires effective communication — the right message, at the right time, to the right customers. A blanket message to all of your customers will have an underwhelming impact. By segmenting your customers into groups that share similar interests or characteristics, you can engage them in ways that feel personalized and tailored to their needs.
By using Attributes, you can easily know if a client fits within a certain segment, and automatically act on it. For instance, a client signs up to an investment platform. Upon subscribing, Attributes is able to pick up that this client makes more than 60 000$ a year, which classifies them as a high potential client.
As an incentive, this client could benefit from 200$ deposited directly in their investment portfolio — a tangible perk that increases the likelihood of this client becoming a loyal user.
3. Talk to your customers
Your most valued customers should know they are valued — nothing beats an interaction with clients quite like in-person meetings or phone calls. In these times of digitalization, real interactions can make a huge difference.
So call your clients. Sit in on support calls. Tell them you value their opinion and want to build solutions to their problems. Ask them what they need to be more effective using your product or service, as well as their overall experience as your customer.
You’ll capture important insights about the customer experience, but you’ll also build stronger relationships with key customers.
4. Help them save money
Given the current circumstances, people are actively looking to cut expenses. If you could proactively verify what clients currently pay for their services, and offer better rates, would you?
Now, you can; by analyzing your clients’ expenses through Attributes, you get a clear portrait of where and how much they spend — on your own product, or something they pay with another provider.
Tailoring a better price option for their needs has never been easier.
5. Guide your clients through big changes in their lives
Change can be unsettling, and it can happen in the blink of an eye. In times of need, your customers will appreciate guidance, as they navigate shifts in income and other aspects of their financial lives. It’s time to provide tips, perspective and a helping hand to users that qualify for your emergency initiatives.
Attributes gives you visibility over how your customers’ income is being impacted, be it with access to emergency funds from the government, a severance package or other cues that let you know that a customer has lost their job. Based on this information, you can go the extra mile and proactively offer tailored services to your customer, which is sure to be a welcomed attention.
What will YOU do?
In order to drive higher retention to your business, the tools are out there and ready to roll out. Allowing you to optimize your retention strategy and make waves amongst customers old and new has never been easier — it’s entirely up to you to make the most of it.
If you would like to optimize your product with a tailored solution, talk with our experts. They will be able to guide you on how to deploy financial data connectivity in the context of your business.
Get started with Flinks today
