Customer retention is important for many businesses for good reasons. For starters, it helps you to lower marketing costs, as existing customers are already familiar with your brand and products or services. Moreover, satisfied and loyal customers are effective tools for drawing new clients to your business. As Altfeld’s research indicates that business owners have a 60 to 70% probability of selling to existing customers, customer retention also promotes repeat sales. Despite these benefits, 61% of businesses view customer retention as their biggest challenge, while 82% of customers will leave a business that ignores them. If you’re in this category, here are some mistakes you should avoid to keep your customers loyal to your brand.
- Neglecting your loyal customers
Your loyal customers are important assets that you can’t afford to lose. Not only are they crucial for your business survival and growth, but you also benefit from higher profits. A Harvard Business School research indicates that you can increase your business profits by 25 to 95% if you increase your customer loyalty by 5%. Likewise, your existing customers are 50% likelier to explore your new products and spend 31% more than new customers. On the flip side, you risk stunting your business growth by 25 to 50% if you lose their patronage. These statistics reiterate the need to prioritize and treat your loyal customers right.
You can achieve this by treating them like you would new customers. That said, begin by offering discounts on products or services that they buy regularly. You can also implement a rewards program to show your loyal customers how much you appreciate them. Take it further by providing free products or services during challenging times and presenting thoughtful gifts during special moments like birthdays and anniversaries. You can also support your clients’ businesses by promoting them on your blog or partnering with them.
- Having a poor website experience
Your website is a good way to boost your online presence. Seeing that many customers favor online purchases, your website is how they get information on your products and services. That said, a poor website experience can cause you to lose customers. Statistics indicate that it takes approximately 50 milliseconds for clients to form an opinion of your website. Likewise, 57% of internet users would not recommend a business with a poor website mobile design, while 38% will leave a website if its layout is unattractive. Therefore, you want to evaluate and improve your website if you haven’t already.
It’s prudent to include a clear call-to-action (CTA) on every page and eliminate things that slow down your website. Also, you want to choose fonts and colors that are easy to read and choose the suitable image formats for the best results. A Web FX survey indicates that approximately 52.2% of website traffic is generated from mobile phones. Therefore, making your website mobile-friendly is another way to keep your customers interested in your brand, so keep this in mind. Heavy plugins can slow down your website, so feel free to eliminate them for the best results.
- Not creating a conducive work environment
Believe it or not, your workers play a crucial in retaining or driving customers away from your business. That said, creating a conducive work environment is an effective way to ensure employee satisfaction. Research indicated that 33% of workers cited environmental factors as reasons for low productivity and engagement levels. Indeed, an unhealthy work environment can cause various health issues that lead to low performance. Likewise, being among toxic colleagues can reduce employees’ morale and desire to work. This, in turn, can lead to low-quality customer service and other work-related mistakes. Moreover, you risk having a high employee turnover rate, hurting your business’s credibility and lower customer patronage. Therefore, focusing on creating a conducive work environment makes sense.
To get started, ensure that you eliminate all distractions to prevent your staff from stressing to concentrate on their work. Also, provide the right work tools to make their work easier and more efficient. For instance, you can get the best automatic bud trimmers if you own a cannabis production business. This will help you get the best products for your clients. Likewise, ensure that your workspace is comfortable and create flexible work options for the best results. As a tip, offer training sessions for customer service to improve how they interact with your clients. You can also create career development opportunities for the best results.
Customer retention is essential for your business’s growth and profit maximization. Hopefully, you will avoid these mistakes to get the desired results.