This report covers the topics which help Companies to retain their customers.

1. CRM Project
Customer Retention Strategies for Companies
By:
Sandeep Kumar

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1. Build Trust through relationship
 Successful businesses are built on trust. When two people are
involved in a business, if there is no trust, the business dies. And there
are only two persons in your business: You and the customer.
 Ideally, when you’re looking to build trust, use the customer behavior
data to deliver enormous value in your product. That way, they will
continually nod and accept your recommendations.
 According to a new report by EY and Forbes Insights, “marketers
should use data to build trust with customers.”
 The moment customers discover that you’re not trustworthy, they will
switch to your competitors. Nothing scares customers away like bad
experience. Worse, they’ll spread the negative news with others.
 A survey conducted by Concerto Marketing Group stated that 83%
of customers will recommend your brand to others if they trust the
brand. While 82% will stick to your brand if they trust it.
 This means that when you build and grow trust, your customers will
gladly advertise your brand – without asking for any compensation.
 Lexus Sweden builds trust through customer conversations. “We
communicate with reviews instead of just using traditional marketing

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because authentic customer commentary is more
trustworthy,” explains Drakenberg.
 In 2011, Lexus Sweden found that people who visited the company’s
website engaged with reviews, which led to 35% more page views than
those who did not – and spent 122% more time on the website.
2.Leverage customer feedback surveys
 Surveys are powerful tools for building customer engagement. Surveys may
look boring, but people like it.
 According to Fluid Survey University, “The Average Response Rate for email
surveys is 24.8%.” And there are several benefits associated with email
surveys. Take a look:
 Truly, hearing from customers directly to know how they feel about
your products and services is a great way to cement the bond that
already exist. In essence, it can help you develop engaging custom
content for customer retention.
 When customers are given the chance to express themselves, they
reveal their minds and feelings about your brand.
 In their complaints, be sensitive enough to catch the pain points. Get
to know the areas they’re not satisfied about and why. Adjusting in
those areas will turn things around.

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 Warning: Don’t frown when your customers complain. Be patient
enough to hear them out. Their feedback is all you need to scale from
being a mediocre or average business to a respected brand.
 Remember that through feedback, you can re-engage a customer
that’s about giving up on your brand.No matter how you look at it,
automation can help your business in so many ways. Most striking is
the fact that it can help you engage and retain your customers.
3. CONSISTENTLY ADD VALUABLE
CONTENT TO YOUR FUNNEL
 As a marketer you might have come across the word “funnel.”
 Well, it’s an integral part of every content marketing strategy. Before a
business can talk about conversion rate, there must be a funnel in place.
 The goal is to guide the visitors and engage with them, until they’re ready
to purchase your product.
 When people first visit your website, they need to be properly nurtured and
engaged with relevant content and persuasion techniques – until they’re
ready to buy.
 Don’t try to sell to strangers.
 It’s just like making a purchase on Ebay. The customer starts by logging
in, searching for the product, then add to cart, before paying for the item.

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 HubSpot simplified this process into 3 vital stages: Awareness, Evaluation,
and Purchase.
 The Top Of The Funnel (TOFU) is usually crowded. But as people go
down the funnel, the number of leads reduce, and only a tiny percentage
of these leads will eventually purchase the product.
 To a large extent, the more people you’ve at the TOFU and MOFU (middle
of the funnel), the more customers you’ll eventually convert.
 In each of these stages you should add valuable contents that will
encourage the visitor to move to the next level. This image shows
examples of what you can offer at each stage.

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4. —Serve, Don’t Sell
 As Kevin Eikenberry says, “People buy from those they like, trust and
respect. Sales will come. Focus on the person, building the
relationship and serving them.”
 With a whole host of ways to connect with your customers, you have
more opportunity than ever to foster relationships. There’s no excuse
for impersonal, self-centered communications.
 For example, responding to a customer complaint on Twitter with
sales pitches misses the mark. Instead, try to mollify the customer and
fix the situation. If you give them what they need, customers are more
likely to reciprocate with repeat business.
5. Overdeliver on your promise
 Because a promise is a debt.
 It’s dangerous promising what you can’t deliver. To avoid hurting
your customers, the rule of business hasn’t changed: “Under promise
and over deliver.” When you follow this formula, you’re exceeding
customer expectation. After all, you’re going beyond what you
promised.
 That’s a great opportunity for you, too.

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 Customers can be aggressive when disappointed. If you promise to
deliver a product in 20 minutes, be there at 15 minutes or 5 minutes
before the time. As simple as this is, you’ll have succeeded in
satisfying your customer.
6. Train your customers with
educational emails
 Sending email newsletters is still the #1 customer retention strategy
that works.With the right application, email newsletter can help you
train your customers – especially when you’re 85% focused on
educating them with branded content.. Attending to new customers
and email subscribers after the initial contact is vital. With an
educational newsletter that you send out periodically, they’ll trust you
more – and feel excited purchasing from you.After all, “teaching sells,”
says Brian Clark Email marketing has over the years been a major way
of increasing customer conversion. But the question still remains:
“what type of emails are you sending to them?”.Sending educational
email is a smart method of educating your customers – and giving
them good reasons to consider buying from you – and not your
competitors..If they can get valuable content from you at the earlier
stages, they probably will like to remain with you.

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7. Improve KPIs around customer
service:
 The KPI stands for key performer indicator (Objectives). Many
companies target their objectives to meet companies’ goals and
reaching their targets.
 KPIs are equally regarded as a roadmap. Because they help you
visualize what the future holds for your business, and what direction
you should be taking.
 Some key performances indicators are:
 I). Response Time: When customers indicate interest in your offer,
response time is a metric that measures how quickly you contact
customers and interested parties with an email, live chat, or a sales
call.
 Time is critical here. If you delay, your conversions will be low. In the
same vein, responding too quickly may not be right for your brand.
You’ve got to find a balance.
 Real estate experts believe that your response time should fall in
between 10 – 20 minutes. That way, you’ll get optimum result, without
leaving any footprint.
 ii). Conversion Rate: This measures the relative response that you get
when you put the call across, send a quick email, or have a live chat
with either a new or existing customer.
 As you send outreach emails, how many of them were opened? Out of
the opened emails, what percentage of these led to sales?
 Conversion rate is a key performance indicator that’s critical to every
business, irrespective of the industry. You can also measure
conversion rate within your funnel – to determine how you’re
attending to customer’s specific needs at every stage.

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 iii). Funnel Drop Rate: Getting new subscribers to your list is
awesome, but you equally want to measure how often people
unsubscribe from your list. That’s what this KPI is all
8. Measure customer lifetime value:
Customers are you’re biggest asset. The
customer life time value is how much a customer generates revenue for your
company in his entire life by purchasing your product. And he also markets
your product by positive word of mouth if he/she is satisfied from your
product. Some of your customers have added more value than others. Some
will always come around to buy; we called them “VIP Customers”.These
repeated buyers are your customers. The value you place on your customer’s
help you predict revenue and determine your budget for providing engaging
content at all times. The customer’s lifetime value can also increase by
providing services at lower rates. An effective strategy to delivering
customer value is in selecting combinations of approaches that give you
synergistic impact on customer value.

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9. SET CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS:
CUSTOMER SERVICE HAS GONE BEYOND ATTENDING TO
INQUIRIES AND COMPLAINTS; YOU ALSO NEED TO MEET THEIR
EXPECTATIONS EVEN WHEN YOU DIDN’T GET THEIR FEEDBACK.
AND IT’S QUITE HARD TO MEET SOMEONE’S EXPECTATION YOU
DON’T KNOW. SO, GET TO KNOW YOUR CUSTOMERS
INTIMATELY. UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY DESIRE MOST, AND USE
THESE POINTERS TO SET EXPECTATIONS. SOME MARKETERS
MADE THE STRATEGIES TO JUST NOT MEET CUSTOMER
EXPECTATIONS BUT TO MEET OVER THE EXPECTATION.
RESEARCH HAS CONCLUDED THAT WHEN COMPANIES’ APOLOGY
FOR THEIR ANY FAULT IN THEIR PRODUCT WITH COMPENSATION
THE CUSTOMER SATISFACTION LEVEL RAISE’S TWO TIMES.
REPUTABLE COMPANIES INSTRUCT THEIR EMPLOYEES TO DEAL
CUSTOMER WITH SMILE ON THEIR FACE I.E. WITH CARE

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