Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

By Ashley Wilson

For small companies in the technology landscape, achieving consistent success and profitability can seem complicated.

Not only do you need to attract customers to your tech solution in a crowded market. You also need to convince them to stick around.

Retaining an existing customer can cost you up to 25 times less than acquiring a new one, and loyal clients also tend to drive bigger profits.

What’s more, for technology companies, where subscriptions and memberships are often the best sources of recurring revenue, customer retention is the key to keeping the lights on.

So, how do you create a customer retention strategy which allows you to compete with the bigger players in your tech landscape?

Build trust with your clients

Improving your customer retention rate starts with building a positive relationship with your clients. Usually, this relationship will be built on mutual value and trust.

First, you need to show your audience they can solve their problems with your products and services.

Next, you need to prove that your clients can trust you to keep delivering results.

Think about your marketing strategy. Are you currently promising your clients more than you can deliver?

Although it’s tempting to offer the world in a competitive marketplace, customers can feel scammed if they don’t get the results they expect, so be realistic about what you can do.

Other ways to build trust include:

– Being transparent: Always be open about how you run your business, what your supply chain looks like, and how you manage your organization. A transparent company seems more authentic and trustworthy.

– Owning up to mistakes: If something does go wrong in your business, you’ll need to ensure you own up and apologize to your customers, rather than trying to sweep issues under the rug.

– Deliver on your promises: If you tell your customers you can do something, make sure you follow through on that promise.

Honesty and integrity help build long-term relationships with your customers.

Implement a customer feedback loop

Clients in today’s experience-focused landscape are more likely to stay with businesses that listen to their complaints, comments, and feedback.

If you want to know what keeps your clients happy, all you need to do is listen to your audience.

This will also help you detect what makes them seek help elsewhere.

Though negative feedback can be difficult to hear for a budding business, it’s also a useful insight into where you need to improve your company to earn more sales.

Your customers can be the ideal source of inspiration when you’re figuring out where to take your company first.

You can collect customer feedback by:

– Sending out surveys and questionnaires: Invite your customers to share their thoughts for a chance to make the service you offer better. Alternatively, you can tempt clients to fill out forms with free discounts or coupons.

– Evaluating customer service calls: Listening to trending complaints and issues in customer service calls is a great way to determine what your clients are struggling with most.

– Reading reviews: Reading customer reviews on your website, review pages, and social media platforms will help you to get your finger on the pulse of what your audience really thinks about you.

Listening to and acting on customer feedback also helps to improve your reputation, by painting you as a business that puts clients first.

Reward customer loyalty

One of the best ways to retain your customers is to show them they’re going to benefit from sticking around.

These days, clients have endless options for who to buy from, so there’s a good chance they’ll find a similar company to yours online.

Often, these companies offer similar solutions for a more affordable price. This means you need to convince clients to stick with you in other ways.

A loyalty program shows your clients that you offer benefits for anyone who stays with you for as long as possible.

You might offer people the option to collect points when they make a purchase or refer someone new to your business or give out points for renewing a subscription.

Other ways to reward customer loyalty include giving people a discount when they renew for a longer period of time or providing exclusive discounts to sales and discount codes to long-term customers.

A strong loyalty program helps you to both find and retain customers, by proving you value your audience.

Use an onboarding program

Finally, one of the most effective ways to improve customer retention is to show your audience how to make the most out of your product from day one.

An onboarding program is an excellent way to help your clients understand your technology and leverage it successfully.

Start by introducing users to your product with videos, tooltips, and guided tutorials.

Onboarding programs can also include a knowledge base on how certain features work or even one-on-one demos with a professional.

By showing your customers how to get the right results from your product, you reduce the risk of them becoming frustrated and seek out another solution.

Onboarding also helps you to figure out what kind of problems customers have when first learning how to use your solution, so you can aid them more effectively from day one.

The faster you help your customers reach their goals, the happier they’re going to be.

Compete on excellent customer service

Finding and retaining customers in today’s competitive landscape can be tough.

However, even small businesses can compete with market leaders when they know how to follow the strategies above.

With the right plan for customer retention and support, you can create loyal, happy clients who stay with your business for longer, and help you to outshine your competition.

Customer service and experience are the only consistent ways to differentiate yourself as a growing business.

Make sure you have what it takes not only to attract clients but keep them around too.

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Ashley Wilson is a content creator, writing about business and tech. She has been known to reference movies in casual conversation and enjoys baking homemade treats for her husband and their two felines, Lady and Gaga. You can get in touch with Ashley via Twitter.