Marketing
4 Effective Ways for Increasing Your Customer Retention Rate

Retention is the key to success in a competitive marketplace. Poor customer retention rates result in high costs and low profits for businesses, but thankfully, there are many effective ways to increase your customer retention rate.
1. Invest in New Technology for Improved Customer Identity and Access Management
One of the easiest ways to increase your customer retention rate is to invest in new technology for customer identity and access management. New technologies have been developed to help organizations control their identities and access, including biometrics, federated identity management, mobile identity management, and single sign-on. These technologies can provide businesses with a foundation for more efficient access governance without more infrastructure or resources.
2. Use Social Media as a Customer Service Tool
Organizations need to establish a clear definition of customer service, define roles and responsibilities of the various teams within the business, identify communication channels that will enable service providers to develop relationships with customers to provide quality customer service. This is the best time to identify your customers’ primary social media channels and create a social media plan.
Social media can be used effectively by companies as a customer service tool. Social media is an excellent tool for businesses to interact with customers and resolve their queries quickly and effectively. A good social media strategy, coupled with effective communication, will help businesses fight competition.
3. Provide a Better Customer Experience
In addition to quality, customers are increasingly interested in the quality of service offered by any company they engage with. Satisfied customers spend more and are more willing to refer others to the company. And there’s a good reason as a customer’s experience influences the customer’s perception of a brand.
One way to improve customer experience is to establish a strong customer-focused culture. A good way to do this is to build a relationship with customers by responding quickly and appropriately when they interact with your business. A strong customer service culture will enable businesses to develop relationships with their loyal customers, who will then become advocates for the business in their personal lives.
4. Create a Customer Loyalty Program
A customer loyalty program is a marketing strategy that rewards loyal customers for their repeat business. The loyalty program can be based on membership of an existing program, such as frequent flier miles or purchases made at partner retailers. It can also be based on spending annually with a particular brand.
The goal of a loyalty program is to connect with the customer on an ongoing basis and reward them for their support and engagement with the brand, leading to increased investment in that brand. One way to build customer loyalty is to offer a reward that exceeds the cost of the customer’s last purchase of goods or services. Discovering which rewards customers value most is an important first step in developing a loyalty program, then determining how often rewards should be offered, the cost per reward, and how many rewards are offered.
In conclusion, organizations need to understand their customers’ needs and deliver a high level of service to improve customer retention rates. If an organization establishes a strong relationship with its customers, they are likely to remain loyal and refer others to the organization.
