9 Pro Tips To Reduce The Customer Churn Rate

When it comes to establishing a successful business, happy customers matter the most. They translate into higher retention and lower churn.

While customer retention is desirable, churn is a matter of concern for businesses. Essentially, it refers to the percentage of customers who stop using your products and services, taking away the revenue they bring to your business. Needless to say, organisations want to reduce customer churn to a minimum.

You will be surprised to learn that companies lose a massive $1.6 trillion every year only because of customer churn. While the financial aspect of customer churn is critical, it also affects the company’s reputation in the long run. People discarding your brand doesn’t work in favour of your brand strategy for obvious reasons.

Thus, it makes sense to find ways to deal with the churn issue and retain customers for the long haul. The latter may seem like a lot of effort, but it is worthwhile as it secures your revenue, profits, and reputation.

Let us share some tangible steps that can help you prevent customer churn and ace retention for your business.

1. Analyse the cause of churn

Even before you look for solutions, you must find the root cause of the problem. Find out why customers are leaving. This is best done by getting their feedback. Not only will feedback take you one step closer to the cause, but your customers will also know that you genuinely care.

That said, sending exit surveys isn’t the best way to get feedback. Instead, you must connect through phone calls every so often to get a better understanding of the issue. Moreover, verbal conversation always has more impact than non-verbal communication.

2. Create a seamless customer journey

Reducing churn rates requires you to ensure a seamless customer journey throughout their association with your business. Study the route that buyers take from the very first interaction down the conversion funnel to the final purchase.

Assess and eliminate areas of friction to reduce customer turnover. For example, if the customer is not happy with the payment options you provide, they will leave at a stage close to conversion. Even worse, they will probably never return to buy again.

Hence, it is best to keep track of customer journeys and address their issues.

3. Go the extra mile with customer support

The most crucial measure to hold onto customers is to go above and beyond with your support services. Research validates that robust communication and excellent customer support can lower the churn rate significantly.

Implementing cloud telephony solutions to empower your agents is the best place to start. This ensures they are easily accessible and have the right tools to deliver the best interactions. You’re also able to monitor agent performance with these solutions via metrics like call waiting, first-call resolution, and conversions.

4. Win with omnichannel engagement

Besides excellent services and support, top-notch customer engagement makes the cornerstone of a low-churn strategy. Invest in an omnichannel approach that gives you access to diverse outreach methods and channels.

Connect and communicate with your audience over phone, email, your website, social media platforms, and live chat. Couple these with a lead generation tool and a CRM system to take your business a notch higher and personalise your interactions.

Everything boils down to keeping clients engaged wherever they are, and going omnichannel does the trick.

5. Educate the customer

Think beyond engagement and educate your customers if you genuinely want to lower churn rates. Buyers are smarter than ever, and they want more than just top-quality products and shopping experiences. Educating them boosts revenues and confidence in your brand, giving them more reasons to stay rather than leave.

Offering free training, video tutorials, webinars, and product demos can take you one step ahead of the curve. This also helps your clientele become more informed about and comfortable with your products.

6. Identify valuable customers

When it comes to controlling churn rates, it is vital to identify your most valuable customers. Once you segregate them, it will be easy to go the extra mile and give them special treatment.

Remember, not only do loyal customers generate revenue regularly, they also boost your business with word-of-mouth recommendations. A little takes you a long way, as retention isn’t a big deal for already happy customers.

Moreover, the effort is worthwhile when you focus on high-value buyers. Going through the history of past orders and interactions can help you pinpoint the ones that matter.

7. Pinpoint at-risk buyers too

Apart from identifying valuable customers, you also need to recognise the high-risk ones. Connect with them and ask what they are unhappy about. This will help you proactively resolve their concerns and prevent them from leaving. The sooner you do it, the better are your chances of retaining them.

Taking a proactive approach is vital, so make sure you do your bit to transform unhappy customers into brand loyalists. If the at-risk customers aren’t willing to share the reasons for leaving, you can follow their interactions till you uncover the issues.

8. Incentivise buyers

Whether customers are valuable or at-risk, incentives can do the trick and make them stay. Go full throttle with deals, discounts, and offers. Alternatively, you can get creative with incentives through unique ideas. Try quizzes and gamification that let them earn prizes for staying with your business. Whatever you do, give them reasons to yearn for more.

However, as you incentivise, evaluate the ROI of the initiative to see that it adds value to your business.

9. Leverage your competitive advantage

Another good idea to reduce customer churn is by leveraging your competitive advantage. To do so, you will have to identify your USP. What makes your business stand apart? Is it your product or service? Or the quality of customer experience? Does your brand name make your business different from the rest?

Understand your strengths and highlight them across all channels to entice buyers. If they see value in staying with your brand, customer churn rate will automatically fall.

Get started now!

High customer churn can be a grave concern, and organisations should address it at the earliest. Embracing cloud telephony for your customer support team is the best place to start. Look for a  service provider you can rely on for efficiency, reliability, and performance.

Authors Bio

Kritik Verma is a marketing enthusiast with a specialization in digital marketing. He is currently working at Servetel, a leading cloud telephony service provider offering IVR Services to boost business success.He enjoys cycling, travelling, indie music, and reading about the latest digital marketing trends.