5 Simple Steps to Boost Retention

As more and more businesses turn toward a subscription model the emphasis on customer retention has ballooned. The need to acquire customers still exists, but the stability of a business is increasingly reliant upon building a steady stream of revenue from existing customers year after year. So, how can you maximize the lifetime value of a customer? What steps can you take to boost retention?

Our CEO, Guy Nirpaz hosted a great online event to address those questions. He shared 5 actionable steps you can take to boost your customer retention:

1. Manage your customer’s journey… not the renewal event

What do you do between acquisition and renewal? Are you delivering on the value you promised to your customers? The path between acquisition and renewal is a large part of the customer journey — if you don’t manage it and just manage renewal, you’ll be surprised and blindsided by customer churn. Monitoring the customer journey puts you in a position to identify and proactively address potential weak spots, shape the customer experience, and drive recurring value.

2. Improve product engagement across all users.

90% of churn is preceded by poor product usage. We see usage as a leading indicator of value and something that is important to measure — not only at the account level but for every user. Product engagement will vary from role to role, but creating engaged, passionate, users is the key to preventing churn.

3. Create a health score that you can actually trust

Before the digital era, NPS was the best way to understand customer satisfaction and health. But today, we have much richer information on our customers including unprecedented visibility into their actions and behavior. So what does a “true health score” incorporate? A combination of metrics on user engagement, business outcomes, service utilization, and operational status. And it needs to be adaptable for different customer segments and the stage each customer is in their journey.

4. Engage with customers in a smart and relevant way

81% of customers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience. Proactive, well-timed, intelligent engagement and communication has a big impact on the overall customer experience. With the right data and the right tool, companies can deliver personalized and relevant engagement for not only large customers but also the small ones.

5. Empower all customer-facing teams with the right data.

In most organizations, customer data is siloed in systems and tools associated with different departments. This not only creates poor customer experiences, but it also misses opportunities to maximize revenue. When companies build a centralized customer intelligence database and use customer insights to drive every customer-facing organization, retention rates and customer lifetime value increase.

Are you implementing any of these tips already? How are they working in your organization? Let us know in the comments section below.

Don’t miss the excellent replay of the live event that has more advice and examples of the 5 ways to boost retention: Click here to check it out.

5 Simple Steps to Boost Retention