3 effective tips for nurturing existing customers that you can't ignore
Let's save these 3 effective tips for nurturing existing customers that you can't afford to miss
Bùi Phương Thảo
6.4.2024
Customer retention is an essential part of every business's strategy. By creating great experiences and maintaining relationships with customers who have used your products or services before, you not only foster loyalty but also increase sales opportunities and generate sustainable growth for your business. In the following article, SO9 will show you three effective tips for customer retention that you can't afford to miss. Let's find out!
I. Why is a customer retention plan necessary?
Customer retention involves all activities aimed at maintaining and enhancing relationships with customers who have previously purchased products or used services from a business. This may include updating information about new products and services or providing special offers and promotions, etc.
In the strategies of many businesses today, customer retention is considered a top priority because it brings many important benefits to the business:
- Increase in revenue: According to research by Gartner, loyal customers tend to spend an average of about 33% more than new customers. Research by Bain & Company also shows that increasing the retention rate by 5% can lead to revenue growth ranging from 25% to 95%.
- Cost savings: According to Bain & Company's research, the cost of retaining existing customers is only about 1/7 to 1/6 of the cost of acquiring new customers.
- Building loyal customers: Good customer retention can turn customers into loyal ones. Invesp's research has shown that loyal customers are likely to spend 31% more than new customers.
- Brand development: Satisfied existing customers who share their positive experiences can have up to 92% influence on others' purchasing decisions. Research also shows that when customers are satisfied with a product or service, they can become natural brand ambassadors, helping the business attract new customers.
- Improvement of products and services: Feedback from existing customers helps improve the products and services of the business, thereby enhancing quality and increasing competitiveness in the market, as noted by Forrester Research.
II. Common Types of Customer Retention
1. Direct Customer Service
This type of customer care involves direct contact and interaction between employees of the business and customers. For example, at the store, showroom, or product launch events, staff provide information, address inquiries, and assist customers directly. For many people, such direct experiences offer a more personalized and powerful interaction compared to customer care via email or other media platforms.
- Advantages:
- Creates a sense of closeness and friendliness with customers.
- Resolves issues quickly and efficiently.
- Provides opportunities to gather direct feedback from customers.
- Disadvantages:
- Difficulty in reaching customers at a distance.
2. Phone-based Customer Care
Making phone calls is a common method of customer care. Staff members will initiate calls to update information, address inquiries, handle complaints, or simply check the status and satisfaction level of customers.
- Advantages:
- Convenient and quick.
- Reaches customers everywhere.
- Easy to collect feedback from customers.
- Disadvantages:
- Difficulty in resolving complex issues.
3. Email and Messaging-based Customer Care
Sending emails or messages is a method of communication and customer care from a distance. This activity includes sending notifications, updates about new products/services, gathering feedback, or providing assistance when customers need it.
Customer care through email is becoming increasingly popular and widely used in most businesses today. Emails can contain a large amount of information, and checking emails has become a daily habit for most people. Therefore, through email, businesses can reach customers more effectively.
- Advantages:
- Low cost.
- Reaches many customers simultaneously.
- Easy to automate customer care processes.
- Disadvantages:
- Difficulty in creating interaction with customers.
- Difficulty in resolving complex issues.
4. Social Media Customer Care
Businesses can interact and care for customers through social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc. This provides customers with easy access and quick support.
- Advantages:
- Reaches many potential customers.
- Effective interaction with customers.
- Builds a positive brand image.
- Disadvantages:
- Difficulty in controlling content.
5. Live Chat Customer Care
Currently, consumers tend to seek information about products/services on a business's website. The live chat box on the website has become an effective customer care tool that businesses cannot ignore. When integrated with chatbots, live chat (such as Zalo chat, Messenger chat) becomes a comprehensive and convenient tool for customer care. This helps improve customer service capabilities, automate question answering, and provides immediate support.
- Advantages:
- Quickly and effectively resolve issues.
- Provides direct interaction with customers.
- Easily collects feedback from customers.
- Disadvantages:
- High cost.
- Requires staff to be available 24/7.
6. Forum Customer Care
Online forums and communities are becoming an effective customer care tool, bringing freshness and appeal to users. They provide a space for businesses and customers, as well as among customers themselves, to discuss products, services, and various other topics.
This type of platform allows businesses to quickly update diverse information, reach new customer groups, or conduct PR activities simply and cost-effectively. However, to choose the right forum, businesses need to customize according to their industry and scale of operation.
- Advantages:
- Builds a loyal customer community.
- Quickly addresses customer inquiries.
- Easily gathers feedback from customers.
- Disadvantages:
- Difficulty in controlling content.
III. 3 Effective and Professional Tips for Customer Retention
Understanding the importance of nurturing existing customers, not every business can build a perfect and effective customer care strategy. Here are 3 tips that SO9 wants to suggest to you for effectively caring for existing customers.
1. Identify Customers in Need of Care
The fundamental rule in marketing is to understand the target customers. Each business will have different products/services, thus having distinct target customer groups. For example, a high heels brand will not target male, children, or elderly customers.
For existing customers, identifying the target customers is also crucial to differentiate between those who no longer need the product and loyal customers. Once identified, employees can apply a customer care Script to send appropriate products/services or information, and special offers. This helps avoid sending wrong or excessive messages to non-interested customers, thus increasing the chance of positive interaction with customers.
There are many methods to classify existing customers, and here are some common ones:
- Gender-based classification: For stores selling products for both genders, classifying customers by gender is necessary to send suitable messages to each group.
For example, a clothing store can classify customers by gender and send different messages to each group. For instance, sending an email with the subject line "Latest Fashion for Women" to the female group, and "Latest Men's Fashion Collection Update" to the male group.
- Product/Product type purchased: Classifying customers based on purchased products helps businesses provide information, advice, and promotions for similar products that customers have previously purchased.
For example, a household goods store can classify customers based on purchased products. If a customer has purchased an automatic vacuum cleaner, the store can send an email with the subject line "Special Offer for Vacuum Cleaner Accessories". Or if a customer has purchased a blender, the store can send an email with the subject line "Delicious Recipes with Blenders".
- Classification based on expenditure: Classifying existing customers based on their spending level is an important method to help businesses better understand their relationship with each customer and create appropriate customer care strategies.
For example, a cosmetics store can classify customers based on their spending level. Customers who spend over 5 million dong can be considered as loyal customers. Meanwhile, those who spend over 10 million dong can be classified as loyal customers. For each group, the store can apply different marketing and customer care programs to maintain the relationship and retain customers.
- Classification based on the last purchase: Classifying existing customers based on the timing of their last purchase is an important method to help businesses optimize advertising campaigns and increase the effectiveness of customer care.
For example, a skincare store can send care messages to customers one week after their purchase. Inquire about their product usage experience, provide usage advice, and offer suitable additional products. After a month, when the product is almost used up, the store can call to check in and advise customers on repurchasing or purchasing other products. Such customer care increases the chance of customers returning for their next purchase.
In addition to the mentioned classifications, there are still many other ways to classify existing customers, such as based on age, geographical location, interests, product usage needs, purchase timing, and many other criteria.
2. Building a plan to care for existing customers:
Once customers have been classified into groups, planning for customer care will help businesses maximize the potential of each customer group to improve business efficiency.
To effectively plan for caring for existing customers, it is essential to first clearly identify the products or services that the business provides. Next, choose the appropriate communication channels to send messages or make care calls to customers.
For example, in the case of beauty products or fashion clothing, sending messages through applications like Facebook Messenger, Instagram, or Zalo may be more effective than making phone calls.
At the same time, it is necessary to determine the appropriate time to send messages or make care calls, such as after customers purchase products, or after they have used the products for a certain period, like a week or a month.
Once the communication channel and appropriate timing have been identified, the next step is to develop ideas for the content and visuals in the plan to care for existing customers. The content sent must be adjusted to fit each specific product or service, aiming to address the issues that customers may encounter when using those products or services. Visuals also play an important role and should be designed to be attractive and capture the attention of customers.
3. Setting appropriate questions:
Preparing comprehensive content for the plan to care for existing customers is crucial. Among these, asking questions is the most effective method to understand customers' service experiences, thereby adjusting and planning suitable marketing strategies to retain them. So, how should questions be posed to build effective relationships with customers?
3.1. What are Probing Questions?
Probing questions are not just ordinary questions but also the key to understanding the genuine needs of customers. Probing questions are designed to gather deeper, more detailed information about a specific topic. In sales, these questions help you understand more about the needs, desires, concerns, and priorities of customers.
The objectives of probing questions are:
- Understand Needs: Delve into the genuine needs of customers, not just what they say they want.
- Identify Issues: Discover specific challenges that customers are facing.
- Explore Solutions: Search for ways that your product or service can address those customer issues.
- Build Relationships: Demonstrate care in resolving customer problems rather than solely focusing on selling products.
There are several types of probing questions. Here are the four most common:
- Open-ended Questions: Encourage customers to share detailed information and emotions.
- Close-ended Questions: Gather specific information, often resulting in "yes" or "no" answers.
- Clarification Questions: Help clarify information or opinions that have been shared.
- Product-probing Questions: Explore experiences and desires related to specific products or services.
3.2. A set of 20 questions to effectively care for existing customers
Open-ended questions:
- How do you feel after using our product/service?
- What do you like/dislike the most about our product/service?
- Do you have any suggestions for improving your experience with our product/service?
- Do you feel that our product/service meets your needs?
- Do you have any suggestions for us to improve our product/service?
Closed-ended questions:
- How long have you been using our product/service?
- Do you plan to use our product/service in the future?
- Are you satisfied with the price of our product/service?
- Would you like to receive the latest information about our product/service?
- Are you willing to recommend our product/service to others?
Clarifying questions:
- Why did you choose to use our product/service?
- What do you expect to gain from using our product/service?
- Have you encountered any issues when using our product/service?
- Could you share more about your experience using our product/service?
- Has our product/service met your expectations?
Product/service-related questions:
- How would you rate the quality of our product/service?
- Are there any additional features or new services you would like us to develop?
- Which product/service do you like the most in our portfolio?
- Is there any aspect of our product/service that you feel needs improvement?
- Are you considering continuing to use our product/service?
IV. Automating Customer Retention Processes with 9Rechat
Automating the process of nurturing existing customers is one of the effective methods to save time and increase efficiency. By using software, businesses can automatically send messages to existing customers based on predefined time settings.
The software also supports automatic messaging on holidays, weekends, or special events without the need for manual intervention or worrying about forgetting schedules. This is especially useful when you have a large number of customers to care for.
Currently, there are many tools on the market that support bulk messaging, among which 9Rechat stands out. This is a FREE bulk messaging tool to send messages to your existing customer base through your Fanpage. With 9Rechat, you can:
- Send unlimited bulk messages to Fanpages, even those with Message Tag restrictions or limitations on the number of messages sent.
- Send messages with unlimited content: Unlike some other solutions, 9Rechat does not limit the content of messages sent. Your messages can contain advertisements, promotions, images, and website links, helping you optimize your marketing strategy.
- Continuously update the message recipient list: 9Rechat's system will automatically scan and update information on newly interacting customers into the message recipient list. This helps avoid sending messages to invalid or inaccurate phone numbers, increasing the chance to reach and interact with customers effectively.
- Add multiple message-sending accounts: 9Rechat allows you to add multiple bulk messaging accounts simultaneously, helping increase the effectiveness of your messaging campaign.
- Content spinning: 9Rechat provides content spinning feature, allowing you to send messages safely and limit duplicates, ensuring messages reach the right customers without unnecessary spam or duplicates.
- Optimize message sending time: 9Rechat will help you allocate time and automatically send bulk messages in a reasonable manner to avoid being marked as spam.
Conclusion
Caring for existing customers is an opportunity to build long-term and sustainable relationships with them. By applying the 3 tips outlined in the article, you can maintain relationships with existing customers and increase sales opportunities for your business.
- Identify customers in need of care.
- Develop a plan for nurturing existing customers.
- Ask appropriate questions.
We hope the information in this article will help you find the right solution for your business. Additionally, don't forget to visit the SO9.VN website to explore the latest business operation knowledge updates! Wish you success!
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