How to increase and maintain customers in your target market
You have a business and you realize you are not getting the target number of customers desired. This makes you wonder, “How do I grow and maintain more customers in my target market?”
This issue of increasing the number of customers has left business owners unsettled for years. For most businesses, the hardest part of growth is acquiring new customers. Thankfully, most businesses can increase their customers more readily by making use of the world wide web. At Empistos Trusted Service Providers, we help your business increase its customer traffic because of our strong online presence.
In addition to growing their customer base, businesses are also focused on retaining existing customers. Notably, this is because a 5% increase in customer retention can lead to a 75% increase in customer lifetime value. Customers who are familiar with your company are more likely to buy from you again and will provide more value to your business over time.
Below, are a few tips your customer care service team can use to grow and maintain your business customers.
Provide Excellent Customer Service
This one may seem obvious, but so many companies fail to deliver exceptional customer service. Many consumers have stopped conducting business with brands due to a poor customer service experience. Customers expect quality services to their satisfaction to the extent that one error by your business can result in loosing your business’ customers.
If you want to provide quality customer service, engaging with needy or unhappy customers shouldn’t be viewed as a task. Instead, your team should look at these customers as an opportunity to grow and maintain your customer base. Respond to their requests immediately and these customers will be more likely to order for your services or purchase your products always because they feel like your company is invested in their success. Over 90% of your business customers are likely to make repeat purchases if you have great customer care service.
Encourage Customer Advocacy
It can be difficult to increase your customers especially when they have never heard of your product or service. Customers are skeptical of advertisement and most won’t be converted solely by your marketing efforts. Rather, they need to feel confident that your service or product is aligned with, and invested in, their goals and needs.
One of the best ways to build trust with new customers is to leverage your customer advocates. These advocates provide referrals and testimonials that improve your brand’s credibility in the eyes of potential customers. In fact, a large number of consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations. So, even if your customer advocates aren’t directly referring new customers, encouraging them to do so and publicizing their feedback will help make your business stand out.
Create Freemium Offers
Freemium offers are a great way to grab the attention of potential customers. With a free offer, your company gives away something of value for free. The item given away can be as simple as a branded gifts, contests, coupons or free services for a specific limited period. Later, you may charge a premium for the advanced features or your product or service.
Adopt Customer Service Tools
As you start to accumulate more customers, your customer service team must adapt to handle the increase in customer demand. One option your business has is to hire more reps to field customer care service requests. This route is less desirable because it’s expensive and time-consuming to complete. Instead, you can use customer service tools to expand the bandwidth of your customer care service team without hiring new employees.
One tool that you can integrate into your customer service team is a help desk. A help desk is a platform that hosts a variety of useful customer service tools, like a knowledge base, a ticketing system, and a shared inbox. These tools automatically organize and distribute incoming service requests which makes it easier for reps to manage your business customers’ issues. Instead of having to keep track of what they’re working on, customer service tools optimize your reps’ workflow and free up time for them to take more cases each day.
Collect Customer Feedback
If you’re running out of ideas for how to attract new customers, look at your customer feedback. Positive feedback tells you what you’re doing well and what you should boast about to new leads. Negative feedback highlights where you need to improve and what needs to change to increase customer retention. Keeping close attention on your customer feedback gives you a better idea of what your customer base or market share values most about your company.
There are many effective ways to collect customer feedback. For example, provide customers with surveys after a purchase or service interaction. Online surveys are great because they provide your company with qualitative and quantitative data about your customers. If your team is having trouble collecting responses, check out some of these strategies you can use to obtain customer feedback.
Create a Customer Success Program.
Successful businesses understand that a customer’s value increases as they buy from your business over time. If you can convince people to keep coming back to your business, your customer base will continue to grow consistently even if you’re only acquiring a handful of customers each month.
One effective customer retention tool is a customer success program. Customer success teams monitor individual accounts for roadblocks within the customer’s journey. If they anticipate friction, they can reach out to the customer and help them navigate around the issue before it escalates into a significant problem. This can make all the difference in preventing customer agitations, especially when you can remove pain points before customers even know they exist.
Optimize Your Customer Loyalty Program.
Your customer loyalty program is another useful strategy to grow and maintain your business’ customers within your market. It can keep your most loyal customers engaged with your brand’s promotional offers and it can be a competitive advantage when customers compare your company to a competitor in your marketplace. Consumers say that loyalty programs influence their decision when considering a new brand.
One way that you can optimize your customer loyalty program is by adopting a tiered membership structure especially if you are a service provider. Tiers encourage customers to continue buying from your business and create a sense of community as they progress through each level of loyalty. Each tier should have its own special rewards and the rewards should increase in value as customers move toward the highest tier. This is where your team can estimate customer lifetime value and determine how much a person should spend at your business before they’re considered to be one of your most loyal customers.
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