Companies generally don’t thrive by only selling their products or services to new people. The best way to build a successful company is by creating a customer experience that builds customer loyalty for your brand and keeps them coming back to you. The reality is that competitors might offer similar product quality and pricing as your company, so if you offer a terrible customer experience, your customers will have no problem going to your competitors instead of you. To help you avoid losing your customers to competitors due to poor customer experiences, a recent article by Efuah Faler offers eight call center retention strategies to help your company retain customers.
1) Ask For Feedback
The most important opinion of your customer experience comes from the customers themselves. To learn more about your customers’ wants and needs, Faler recommends using short surveys to gain their feedback. Other possible options include focus groups, social listening and phone interviews.
2) Learn To Respond, Not React
Respond to negative feedback by trying to help the customer’s issue, not by reacting to the anger or hostility behind it. It’s important to maintain composure and think through your response, but still make it a goal to respond as quickly as possible.
3) Show You Care
An apology doesn’t mean anything without backing it up with action. Faler gives the examples of sending the customer a new product if the one they purchased was damaged or giving them a refund on shipping costs.
4) Don’t Make A Sale, Make A Customer
People don’t want to be treated like their money is all that matters to a company. They want to feel like they have a relationship with a brand or company. Companies should build relationships with their customers instead of only viewing them as a potential sale.
5) Be Transparent With Employees
Customer feedback should be given to all employees in a company. This puts emphasis on the significance of the customer experience and keeps it on top of the minds of everyone involved.
6) Give Employees Freedom
Instead of forcing contact center agents to strictly follow scripts and procedures, give them the power to do what’s right for each customer on an individual basis. This builds trust between company and employee, which gives them confidence to better help the customer.
7) Make It Easy To Reach You
People get extremely frustrated if they can’t find a way to contact your company. Faler says to make sure you’re available on social media relevant to your company. Also, make sure your contact information is clearly available on your website.
8) Surprise And Delight Your Customers
What takes you from giving service that customers feel neutral about to actually delighting customers? According to Faler, it’s exceeding their expectations. Potential ways of exceeding expectations include sending discounts to loyal customers or offering complimentary products and services. Loyalty should be rewarded, so be sure to show your customers how much they mean to you!
This blog post about customer retention rates is based on an article from CustomerThink. To read the original article, please click the link below:
8 Customer Retention Strategies that Work! – Efuah Faler
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