As a startup founder, you know that there is no greater desire to win your first customer or your first ten customers. You’ll do whatever it takes to call a customer your own. Customer acquisition is something you’ll practically fantasize about it.
I’ve heard some entrepreneurs compare that feeling of owning their first pet.
Beautiful, let us go by the pet analogy:
Like customers, pets get stolen, escape, or get lost. Even if they don’t, you have to accept that a pet has a lifespan, sooner or later, they will be gone. You will grieve, and you will question what more you could have done. But eventually, you accept it and think, “That’s life.” So, the cycle continues.
Fun Fact: Do you know that it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than it does to keep your existing customer base.
In this post, we will talk about some practical and relatively cost-efficient strategies that will help you instill that kind of loyalty in your customers so that they will not be inclined towards another brand.
Have a look at these 6 Customer Retention Strategies for Startups:
1. Figure out why Your Customers Leaving
Like solving any problem, the first step to customer retention strategy is identifying what led to the problem.
– Did you not serve them well?
– Or maybe they were not happy with the product?
– Do they expect something more from your product?
These are the questions worth pondering over!
The most effective strategy to adopt in this case is to obtain customer feedback from the customers who are not willing to do business with you anymore.
As soon as you see that the customer has now terminated the contractor is no longer availing your services, immediately send a personal email. The email should, first of all, entail how you are sad to see them go. Secondly, ask your customer what led to this exit.
2. Ask For Sales Referral from Your Loyal Customers
With the above strategy in place, you already have a system to distinguish between your loyal customers and the customers who are likely to leave your brand soon.
You can ask your loyal customers for some positive and unbiased referrals. According to a Nielsen survey on trust and advertising, referral marketing stands the highest in convincing customers, across every demography.
3. Improve Your Customer Service & Experience
No matter how standard your product is, it is inadequate if you don’t back it up with equally exemplary customer service.
According to a survey, 68% of customers leave because of the poor treatment that they received. Poor customer experience directly affects your growth and costs you many customers.
4. Work on the features that matter the most
As your brand progresses, you will begin to realize that your customers are prioritizing some features much more than the others.
As a founder, you should identify those features that are most important to your customer base, and make sure that you are working towards increasing the quality of those particular features.
If you make the highly sorted after feature even better, then your customers will be less and less tempted to cancel their subscription or contract.
5. Be more customer-driven with changes to pricing and billing
The business environment is ever-changing. However, founders need to be very careful about making changes to billing and pricing until you’ve explored every angle of how it will impact your customers.
6. Offer better upgrades, discount coupons, and other rewards
Who doesn’t like freebies? Of course, everyone does!
Surprise your customers by offering them free upgrades, discount coupons, and small rewards relevant to them.
According to a prominent Columnist Peter Economy, “the secret to delivering great customer service is to give your customers a surprise, something they didn’t expect. It’s those unexpected experiences that leave customers with a story they are eager to tell.”
Surprising and offering freebies to your customers is an excellent customer retention strategy. So use this strategy and see how your customers will keep coming back.
In Summary
As I have said before in this article, obtaining new customers is way complicated, and even more expensive than retaining the existing ones.
In the end, it all comes down to keeping your customers happy, satisfied, and feeling important. So use the tips mentioned above and improve your customer retention rate.
What other strategies do you think will work best when it comes to improving customer retention for your startup?
