Making enough income from an existing business is not a child’s play. While it is easy to attract customers on a face value, retaining those customers is where most business owners have failed.
For a business to survive, there must exist, a symbiotic relationship between a brand and its customers, failure of which could kill the company.
Hence, care must be taken to urgently address customers’ complaints as they fall due. Customers, these days, are in a hurry. So, if you fail to address their concerns, they move on to another competing brands and chances are that you may not regain them back again.
Hence, an entrepreneur should have enough inducement packages to keep existing customers at arm’s length.
Customer Loyalty
It is important to understand that customer loyalty is what makes both new and old brands remain relevant in the market place. Working with existing customers is easier. And loyal customers will help in marketing your brand, most importantly for emerging market business owners by way of referral or online reviews.
Speaking on how brands can know when their customers are or will be unhappy, disengaged or otherwise dissatisfied, a customer relations expert, Caroline Entonu said: “Such brand must notice that its newsletter and marketing email open rates must have dropped significantly. The growth in the brand’s number of Twitter followers has slowed to a crawl. The click-rate for their digital ads has dropped off. All of these are signs that customers are disengaging from your brand.”
Retaining Your Customers
While proferring solutions to such challenge, she pointed out that, “brand handlers should ask their customers what’s going on. They should be gathering customer feedback on every step of the customer journey, from marketing to post-sales support – so if they are not, they should start now. Then make sure to include survey questions that gauge where their customers are at the moment. Try to find out if they have stopped using a particular social media platform. Is their business growing so quickly they no longer have time to open marketing emails?”
According to her, “it’s a common (and smart) practice to offer new customers some kind of incentive to buy from your company. But go too far with this and you risk annoying your existing customers – and existing customers are by far the most valuable to your bottom line. Acquiring new customers costs five times more than satisfying and retaining current customers.”
She further stressed that, “you might not think the inner workings of your company or organization have much of an impact on your company’s success because customers buy from you as a result of the likeness they have for your products or services.
For her, “selling to existing customers is a smart business, but do so thoughtfully. Blindly throwing your products and services at them won’t get you very far. Survey your customers regularly and frequently to get a real-time understanding of their needs so you can make targeted offers to them. Gathering customer feedback and incorporating the results into your decision-making will help promote satisfaction, engagement and loyalty over time.”
While charging entrepreneurs to engage their customer service team to make sure customers’ needs are taken care of promptly, efficiently and with a positive attitude, she urged them to gather employees feedback as well to find out where there may be gaps in your processes
On his part, marketing strategist, Paul Amodu proffered that, “find out what drives your customers. If you are touting low prices, but your customers are primarily concerned with service, you’re not meeting your customers where they live. What worked yesterday might not work today because of customers’ lives, and therefore needs, change over time.”
