When trying to grow a business, deciding what to focus on is never easy – particularly during a pandemic. Customer acquisition is often seen as the be-all and end-all: it can be hard to ignore the powerful lure of hitting targets, increasing sign-ups, and seeing your base grow. But did you know that the cost of onboarding new customers is up to seven times more than maintaining your current subscription base?
Retaining customers, therefore, is just as important as converting new ones – which means it’s vital to review current policies and strategies on a consistent basis to ensure you’re encouraging loyalty. In this blog, you’ll discover three easy ways to add value, which will help keep your existing customers engaged – and feeling appreciated.
Don’t Forget the Importance of Lifetime Value (LTV)
Lifetime value is the amount of money a customer will spend on your services from the beginning of their journey with your company, to the time that they leave (hopefully never!). Whilst the most obvious way to maximise LTV is to ensure that a customer stays with you for the long term, you can also increase the profitability of existing customers by taking the time to nurture the relationship. Creating personalised offers, such as upgrades, free additional benefits and incentives, will not only make your customer feel valued – thus inspiring them to stay with you – but also may encourage them to spend more money with your company as time goes by.
Respond to Changing Consumer Expectations
One thing is certain: customers will always respond well to competitive pricing! Apart from that, however, all bets are off – and the recent COVID-19 pandemic has flipped much of what we thought we knew about consumer behaviour on its head.
The pandemic has been fantastic, in many ways, for subscription billing services: the stability that a recurring system offers – whether it’s for serving new content or delivering food – has provided a sense of comfort for many customers during this uncertain time. Moreover (and perhaps unsurprisingly), home delivery services, many of which cater to the subscription model, have been increasingly popular. However, one key thing has changed: customers are now extremely unlikely to tolerate unreliability or any question marks over brand reputation. Trust is crucial – customers need to know their goods will arrive on time, won’t go out of stock suddenly, and that products are being handled in hygienic and secure fashion - so a brand must be credible.
By paying close attention to changes in consumer expectations, you can make unprecedented gains and outstrip the competition – because you’ll often find that there are unexpected (and surprisingly easy) ways to add value (ensuring that supply chains are solid or that you have a sophisticated stock management system that offers real-time website updates, for example).
Empower Your Staff
Customer support is an essential, challenging – and often deprioritised – role; yet it should be a lynchpin of your workforce. Customer support professionals are not only the face of your brand, they’re also often the first point of contact for existing customers if they experience any issues or have any queries. With this in mind, it’s extremely important that your team are both empowered and motivated.
Encouraging a high level of engagement within the workplace isn’t always easy, but it’s worth devoting time and resource to creating a supportive and nurturing infrastructure. Investing in training for your staff – to both improve their performance and also promote self development and well being – is incredibly worthwhile, as well as thinking about incentives, benefits, support packages and social opportunities that will foster a sense of community and wellbeing.
It might sound like a cliché, but it's true: happy staff members equal happy customers!