Increase Customer Retention/Reduce Attrition

Clients drift away for a number of reasons. Often management and staff complacency is the cause. But usually clients drift away for reasons that have nothing to do with us.

Salvaging clients from leaving has the same impact to your bottom line as increasing sales by that same percentage.

For example, if a business normally has an annual 30% loss of clients but works to bring that to zero, this is the same as giving the business a 30% increase in sales. But the best part is, the business grows without taking on a single dollar of additional advertising expense. This is as close to getting free money as a business is likely ever to find.

And it’s easier and cheaper to improve your bottom line by preventing attrition than prospecting or advertising to generate sales through new clients.

The first step in minimizing the number of clients who leave is to determine your current annual customer attrition rate. Then put programs in place to prevent that attrition.

The types of programs you want to use are designed to boost client loyalty and trust. Ideally you become so valuable and likable the client would never even consider leaving for a competitor.

But lets be real…that’s all well and good for the future, but what can you do now if clients have already decided to ‘jump ship’?

Launch a customer reactivation program. Follow up with past clients and customers to get them to come back. Using smart marketing you should be able to reactivate 30% to 40% or more of past clients and customers. The advantage to increasing your bottom line is the process is pretty straight forward and does not require spending much money. Perhaps no money. Your only costs are basically reaching out to clients who’ve drifted away.

Lets say you’ve already launched a client reactivation program that is working. What next?

Stop client retention.

An excellent example of a powerful client retention program (though leaning towards the ‘dark side’) for recovering clients who’ve decided to mutiny is America Online’s Retention Manual.

America Online’s Retention Manual is one of the best examples of how to keep customers from leaving that you’ll ever find. Copies of the retention program are floating all over the internet.

Study AOL’s client retention program for ideas on how you can ethically adapt that method to your business.

Your goal is to prevent attrition in the first place. Client retention programs help your current clients see you are thinking of them. And will help reduce mutiny over to your competitors because of assumed management or staff complacency.

These are just some of the ways to increase profits and impact your bottom line without taking on more expenses. Now go put the tips to use.

If yours is an established company contact us to discover if we can help you create a customer retention program that makes sense for your company.