34 Marketing Experts Reveal the Most Overlooked Strategies That Are Highly Effective at Increasing Customer Retention

Whether you have a B2B business or B2C business, customer retention is a top priority. And retaining customers requires keeping them engaged with your brand and remaining top-of-mind so that they continue coming back for more. There are many ways to go about increasing customer engagement, such as push notifications, transactional emails and traditional email marketing, social media, and more.

Like many things in life, though, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing when it comes to engagement. If you bombard your customers with an endless and repetitive stream of notifications, for instance, they’re more likely to experience alert fatigue. That means they’ll probably unsubscribe from your emails or notifications, or they might even delete your app or stop doing business with your brand altogether – the opposite of what your customer retention efforts are trying to achieve.

The key is to find the right balance of customer engagement and other strategies to increase customer retention without going overboard. Fortunately, there are a variety of strategies that can help improve customer retention, but some businesses aren’t using them to their full advantage. To learn more about the most effective and often overlooked strategies for increasing customer retention, we reached out to a panel of marketing experts and asked them to answer this question:

“What's an overlooked strategy that's highly effective at increasing customer retention?”

Keep reading to learn what our experts had to say about the most overlooked yet highly effective strategies you can implement to start boosting customer retention today.

Michael Alexis

Michael Alexis is the CEO of TeamBuilding.

“Keep finding ways to make your service more valuable…”

One of the best ways to increase customer retention is to regularly add new value to your product or service. For example, one of the website hosting providers that we use recently added functionality that improves the speed and performance of our site. The company didn’t increase our prices or require a multi-year commitment; they just made the product more valuable for us. As a result, my loyalty as a customer has increased and so has my likelihood of retention – why would I leave a service that meets my needs and keeps getting better?

You can add value in many ways. Our service provider made their core service better, but they also could have taken approaches like faster or easier access to customer service, helping to promote our business, or creating networking opportunities with other clients. The more ways you find to add value, the more customers will see and appreciate it, and ultimately stick around.

Hana Mohan

Hana is the co-founder & CEO of MagicBell, the notification inbox for web & mobile applications. She is a proud transgender woman who is passionate about empowering women & other minorities. She lives in Barcelona with her two cats.

“A good way for startups to increase customer retention is to do personalized check-ins with your biggest customers…”

As you scale, you want to get a customer success person to do this, but in the early days, you want the founders, and the rest of the team to speak with customers directly. Got a new feature? Email them personally (or better, create a shared Slack channel with them). Use every opportunity to check if they are still finding value in your product, and encourage them to use more features (solve more problems) using your product.

Brian Lim

Brian Lim is the founder and CEO of iHeartRaves & INTO THE AM.

“When it comes to increasing customer retention, one overlooked strategy is…”

Having a consistent release schedule of brand new products. This has been the best way for us to keep our customers engaged because our products are always changing and evolving. With music festivals happening all throughout the year and all over the world, our customers want fresh new designs to choose from. This gives them a reason to come back for future purchases.

Joshua Feinberg

Joshua Feinberg is CEO of SP Home Run and a digital transformation go-to-market content strategist for mid-market and enterprise IaaS, SaaS, and FinTech. Since 2002, Joshua has been building full-funnel inbound sales and marketing programs.

“Customers now expect round-the-clock support…”

The only practical way for startups and small businesses to achieve this is by:

1. Eliminating friction from sales and support
2. Investing in automation
3. Creating amazingly helpful self-service educational resources such as how-to videos, troubleshooting wizards, and knowledge articles
4. Building communities for peer-to-peer support (with some limited professional moderation)
5. Hosting webinars and other live virtual events to help customers better utilize their product or service

Harriet Chan

Harriet Chan is the co-founder and marketing director at CocoFinder.

“Minimize or do away with shipping fees…”

You can use data to see what repeat customers like and dislike. You may look at details to identify why customers click on a product but fail to buy it. You may be surprised to find out that shipping charges can scare your customers away. It may feel like a huge financial risk, but dropping shipping charges will make customers spend more on your products, earning you huge returns. You can take this lesson from Amazon Prime's free shipping policy.

Adam Moore

Adam Moore is the founder of SocialPlus where they help consumers to boost their own company on popular services such as YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.

“Customer retention can be difficult and sometimes pricey if you have many giveaways to help increase your consumer base…”

However, an effective and cheap way of keeping your clientele is to have the CEO or leader of the company send out personal messages through email to thank them for their continued loyalty to the company.

Around Christmas time there are generally a lot of these generic letters or emails sent around to people who have shopped with a business before. However, these are mass messages that have no real personal value. It is important to know your customers and how long they have shopped or been with you.

Always mark down in their file when their first purchase was made or when they first became a customer and send out a note every year around that time to thank them for their continued business. This personal approach is always appreciated and can encourage your customers to continue their loyalty to you and your business. Offering coupons or discounts with these messages is also a great way to show your appreciation and allows them to spend their money with you rather than with a competitor.

Cathy Minz

Cathy Minz is a copywriter, project manager, and co-founder of Elowyn Press. Cathy enjoys road trips, walking their giant dog, Remy, and hanging out with their three adult children.

“Often overlooked in the quest to increase customer loyalty and improve client retention are…”

The personal touches on everyday communication. For example, sending emails is a great idea, but not just salesy content. It's important to make a personal connection with your audience. Include information about your team, who they are, and what they do, as well as some personal details. The goal is to create a personal connection with your reader.

Giving a gift to your clients is also a great way to make an impact and build a relationship; however, just any old gift won't do. In the old days, a fridge magnet used to suffice for keeping your company name top of mind. Today, that seems gimmicky. We suggest something more substantial that makes a positive impact on your client. For example, homeowners will see the benefit of having a Home Maintenance Guide & Logbook on their desk. They can use it to track home repairs, paint colors, and plan renovations. Elowyn Press offers a custom branded version of this book so clients are reminded where the book came from. This builds the company's credibility and a feeling of trust – the ultimate goal in client retention.

Richard Lubicky

Richard Lubicky is the founder of RealPeopleSearch.

“Communicating all the positive and negative updates to your customer is the most overlooked strategy to improve customer retention rate…”

Most organizations believe that updating customers about outages and other negative events related to your organization will negatively impact the customer base. However, being transparent about the situation is much better and gives your customer the assurance that you are going to fix the problem.

Not acknowledging a problem can never help your organization. You need to accept the situation, inform your customers, and start working on remedies to continue your services.

Suppose you are a SaaS startup and one of your tools starts showing some errors. Now, you can either try to fix the problem without addressing the issue, or you can inform your customers about the problem and share the estimated time you need to fix this issue. In the first scenario, the customers not aware of the situation will be annoyed as they will keep trying to access that tool. However, the customer aware of the situation will plan accordingly.

Paige Arnof-Fenn

Paige Arnof-Fenn is the founder & CEO of the global marketing and branding firm, Mavens & Moguls. Their clients include Microsoft, Virgin, The New York Times Company, Colgate, and venture-backed startups as well as non-profit organizations. Paige graduated from Stanford University and Harvard Business School. Paige serves on several boards and is a popular speaker and columnist who has written for Entrepreneur and Forbes.

“I started a global branding and marketing firm 20 years ago and am a big fan of email marketing to increase retention…”

It is a cost-efficient way to build your brand and deepen your relationships through ongoing communication. In my experience, here are a few best practices that make email effective today:

1. Compelling subject line that gets opened

Test with your target to see which does best, don't guess which works.

2. Make your content mobile-friendly

The world is moving to mobile-only. With fewer people accessing email on big screens, tailor your message and content accordingly. Smart technology runs our lives today, and it is hard to stay on top of the latest tools and platforms to take advantage of current trends. You may feel lost, confused, or frustrated by all the options and noise in the market today. There will be new tools and technologies coming for sure, but email has withstood the test of time.

3. More video & rich content

In a mobile-first world, you have less time to grab people’s attention, and attention spans are shorter than ever, so video will be used even more. Show, don't tell for maximum impact. Rich content drives email engagement. Live video will only grow in importance. Live streaming is available on every major social media platform, and it is only getting bigger to hook in users with short attention spans.

4. Content rules: quality over quantity

Consumers have more confidence in trusted content, friends, and influencers than in advertising. The world has been moving this way for years with people seeking friends’ and influencers' opinions and advice online on what to buy, where to go, and what to do rather than relying on a paid ad or fancily packaged content. Today’s customers are savvy. They are happy to buy what they want and need, but they do not like to be sold things. Curated content and ideas from a trusted source beat paid content every time. Partnering and building relationships with the right influencers with content that is co-created helps brands scale and grow faster and amplify and boost their message.

You can call me old-fashioned, but the best communications tool for me is still email. To be able to stay connected to your audience moving seamlessly through the asynchronicity of email anytime is amazing. Emails are a great way to build relationships over time and keep the conversation going. It is just so much easier now. You do not need to be a big multinational company to have these tools at your disposal anymore. It is impossible to time your outreach so that you are in front of potential customers exactly when they need your help, so I just try to stay in regular communication with them so that when they have a problem I can help them solve they will think of me first. We are all in the relationship business, after all. I think it was Woody Allen who said that 80% of success is just showing up. It is a strategy that has worked for me. Email is fast, convenient, cheap, and effective. For me, you can’t beat it.

James Sun

James Sun is an entrepreneur, managing partner, angel investor, and the founder of Beautytap, a diverse online community of beauty professionals sharing their expert advice and reviews about coveted products from around the globe. Sun has worked as an engineer at Intel and as a management consultant at Deloitte Consulting, where they advised Microsoft, Daimler Chrysler, and Boeing.

“Create a streamlined system for following up with customers…”

After they've made a purchase, see how satisfied they are. You can measure this with follow-up emails or by creating a survey. This allows customers to offer feedback that can benefit the company as well as keep them involved in the conversation.

Lauren Milligan

Lauren Milligan is a Career Coach for ResuMAYDAY, a firm that has helped thousands of job seekers over the past 20 years. Lauren’s team helps executives, managers, and emerging professionals with resume writing, interview coaching, LinkedIn profiles, salary negotiations, and other services that give their clients an unfair advantage over the competition.

“My business is transactional; my clients come to me a few times a year, every other year or two…”

For me, customer retention is essential because I don't do any type of traditional advertising – haven't in over 20 years. The way I maintain my client relationships is by staying in touch with my clients, even when we aren't working together. That may mean a quick email to let them know I'm thinking about them and wishing them luck in their career evolution, or it might mean sharing an interesting article that pertains to their job search or industry. Recruiters share job leads with me, and so I happily pass those along to my clients who would be a good match, whether they are actively looking or not.

This strategy doesn't take a lot of time but has paid off well over the years.

Ashley Regan-Scherf

Ashley is the Executive Content Writer for one of Australia's longest-running digital marketing agencies, RGC Advertising.

“Infographics, landing pages, videos, calculators, quizzes, and challenges are examples of interactive content and…”

Entertaining activities that give a website visitor a personalized experience on your site. This interactive content helps to establish trust in your business. It also helps the website achieve a lower bounce rate, lead to incredibly loyal consumers, and increase consumer retention.

Quizzes are wonderful interactive forms for gathering information about the user's maturity and where they are in the funnel. Quizzes may feature questions that assist companies in determining user location, purchase preferences, age, and job, among other information. A business can collect personal information from users through this content to improve their first-party data collection to build better profiles of their audience.

Companies can also influence users to give them their email addresses in this form of lead generation. As email marketing returns one of the highest ROIs in digital marketing, it's a marketing strategy that can't be overlooked.

When it comes down to it, gamification produces something that everyone desires: pleasure. Including game design aspects in your marketing provides a pleasant mental feedback loop for your clients, whether they win a reward or get a feeling of significance.

They'll keep coming back for more if you offer them what they actually want, which is a sense of fulfillment, in addition to outstanding products or services and an incredible customer experience.

Chris Hunter

Chris Hunter is the Director of Customer Relations for ServiceTitan. Chris is an Author, Business Coach, Founder of Hunter Super Techs, and the Go Time Success Group. Chris also leads workshops, seminars, and keynote speeches at conferences around the nation.

“Form a connection with your customer…”

I believe the greatest skill to retain a customer is the ability to truly connect with the customer. Emotional connection is necessary in today's world of sales, as buyers today are seeking less of a salesperson and more of somebody who they deem they can trust.

You can connect with customers by first telling a story instead of making a pitch, and then by working and collaborating with them throughout the deal. After the deal is closed, you want to be sure to keep in contact with them, following up to ensure that all their needs are continually met. You want your customer to feel empowered when purchasing from you, as if they had come to the decision themselves, rather than having been sold anything. Customers who have come to their own conclusion on your product/service will have no reason to defect.

Heather Keita

Heather is the Talent Manager at GrubbyCat.

“This strategy is highly overlooked because it is not a direct method of customer retention…”

But it does directly affect your retention rate. My strategy is simply paying my frontline team a good wage and taking good care of them, so they don't have to work multiple full-time jobs to make ends meet. They're better rested and happier, which defaults to good customer service and encourages customers to come back. It's actually very simple, but most employers don’t realize that if your frontline people are happy, then your customers are more likely to return. It’s that simple, and it’s often ignored as a factor in customer retention.

Jordan Martin-Smith

Jordan Martin-Smith is an Account Director for an SEO Agency in the UK called FULLTIME.digital. Jordan has been in the web design and development industry for about 7 years and now focuses primarily on search engine optimization, helping small businesses be seen online and rank higher on search engines.

“Having run a digital agency for several years, we’ve tried many different ways to communicate with our clients…”

It became clear early on that keeping smooth dialogue with clients and proactively showing them our actions, explaining the reasoning behind those actions, and the results we would expect to see from such actions had a huge impact on our working relationship and their tendency to stick with us.

Due to remote working and COVID-19 restrictions, almost all of my interactions with clients have been online in the past 12 months. I’ve done this through a combination of email, video calls, and video reporting.

Video reporting became a clear winner for me and my clients. I began sending monthly video reports that showed my face, showed my screen, and allowed me to speak to them directly while displaying the data and information I was discussing. It allowed me to cover so much more in a smaller amount of time, as well as show them the results through the various data points I was referring to and explain the results of my actions over the previous month.

Most importantly though, my customers saw my face and heard my voice. I’d almost forgotten the importance of the human element. It’s people working with people, and email/calls quickly give the impression of working with a faceless corporation rather than a person.

The feedback I’ve had has been overwhelmingly positive, and now I make video reporting a standard practice for all clients. It adds a personal touch they are craving for and allows me to add my personality. It also allows me to create a completely personalized video for each client, rather than recycling some standard reporting template with a bunch of numbers and figures that they don’t really understand.

Robin Brown

Robin is the CEO of Vivipins.

“Offer great service…”

This is the single most important factor in customer retention because it gives customers a reason to come back. If they get good service, why would they go anywhere else? Develop habits and rituals that lead customers to depend on your product or service. Essentially, give them a reason not to go somewhere else (and also make sure you're the low-pressure option).

More importantly, work on developing loyalty programs that remind people of this value and reinforce their attraction to your product or service. Do what you say you'll do – whatever it is for the person's exact need – quickly and with such quality that people get addicted to getting what they want from your company.

Brandon Schroth

Brandon Schroth is the Co-Founder of Nomad SEO, a dedicated agency focused on performance, growth, and transparency for their clients.

“An overlooked strategy that’s highly effective is understanding how your customers feel about your company…”

This is because customer satisfaction is the #1 determining factor that makes a customer decide to stay or leave. Not surprisingly, 82 percent of consumers in the United States said they stopped doing business with a company due to a poor customer experience.

So, how can you measure and improve customer satisfaction? The easiest way is to ask them. This can be accomplished through a short survey conducted at the time of purchase or after. It could also be sent by email to customers that haven't visited in some time. You can then use your customer feedback to restructure processes for a better experience.

Martin Luenendonk

Martin Luenendonk is the CEO of FounderJar.

“You’re more likely to retain customers when they have built a relationship with the business…”

As a CEO, communication is the key to this healthy relationship between the customer and the business. However, too much conversation can suffocate customers, which might be the reason for their bounce. Thus, maintaining a customer communication calendar is essential. You might think this is unnecessary, but it is effective towards great customer retention. It also helps to track customer transactions and conversations. This provides important data for research and business development. This is where you can remind your customers about updates and other important announcements. From this, you can create a healthy conversation with your customers.

Ravi Davda

Ravi Davda is the CEO of Rockstar Marketing, a digital marketing agency based in the UK. They help businesses get more leads and sales through the power of digital marketing.

“A lot of businesses run away from complaints and negative reviews…”

I've seen businesses respond to every review on their Google My Business page except the negative ones. These are just ignored. I know other businesses do everything they can to get these deleted altogether. Instead of running away from them, run towards them. What are your customers or previous customers trying to tell you? What changes can you make to your business as a result of these complaints and negative reviews?

Negative reviews are to be expected, even for large companies. If a company has all positive reviews and no negative reviews online, this can send warning signs to a user. A negative review doesn't mean that a customer is ready to leave. It means they want to be heard. It means they want to have a say. Respond in their favor to increase customer retention.

Jeremy Poco

Jeremy is the Co-founder at Eggplain. They are a digital marketing agency with 7+ years of experience in animated commercials or explainer video production.

“As the owner of a small digital agency, I tend to handle our clients directly…”

Not all business owners can handle their clients directly, but I believe this has a big impact on the client.

This probably can't be applied to all business types, but for a small business owner, communicating or working directly with the client makes them feel more appreciated and special. Plus, if their project or purchase is completed successfully and they feel taken care of from start to finish, there's a higher chance that they will be doing repeat business.

I can confidently say this because our business is running on this strategy, as 60% of our projects are from repeat/returning clients.

Max Benz

Max Benz is the Founder and CEO at Remote-job.net.

“The key to customer retention is always trying to find new ways to engage with your customers…”

The trick is not only finding the right way but also making sure that the way you choose fits with what your customer wants and needs. One overlooked strategy that has proven its effectiveness at increasing customer retention is getting them to buy more than once. They are already satisfied, so why not repeat it?

Michelle Devani

Michelle Devani is the Founder of Love Devani.

“Implementing an employee retention strategy is one of the most important things for every business…”

Because it can help you cultivate customer loyalty. As a business owner, I believe that the success of a business is not only when you make a customer buy or avail services from you. It is when these customers come back for more.

As for me, the most effective yet overlooked customer retention strategy is a follow-up engagement through surveys. You can take advantage of giving them free items or discounts when they answer the survey to increase the chance of repeat purchases. Also, you can obtain valuable data from these surveys that can help the business to identify areas that need improvements.

Farzad Rashidi

Farzad Rashidi is the Co-Founder of Respona.

“Offering incentives to refer friends is a time-tested strategy that's effective for increasing customer retention…”

Offering referral bonuses not only wins new customers but also encourages existing customers to buy more and come back more often. The rewards are usually in the form of free or discounted products, discounts on subsequent purchases, or coupons offering free product trials.

Raul Galera

Raul Galera is the Chief Advocate of ReferralCandy.

“I’ve always believed that launching a referral program is one of the fastest and most cost-effective ways to grow your customer base…”

For starters, referral programs incentivize customers to promote your brand with their friends and family. If they can manage to convince their loved ones to make a purchase, they can get rewarded with discounts, coupons, and freebies.

How effective are referral programs in customer acquisition? One of our clients is A Box of Stories – a subscription box service in the United Kingdom. They launched a referral program wherein customers and referred friends can get £4 off their purchase by participating.

Within four months, they achieved a referral rate of 3.38%. This meant 3.38% of all purchases can be attributed to their referral program. They also achieved an astounding 3000% ROI, proving that their referral program generated sales equal to 30 times the cost of building the program.

The best part? Close to 5,000 customers have joined their referral program in hopes of converting their friends to make a purchase. Of this number, 6% of the referral program members were new customers acquired through referrals.

Robb Hecht

Robb Hecht is the Creator Productivity Coach at Baruch College in New York City.

“From a holistic omnichannel marketing perspective…”

With content being built for the website, social channels, email, text, and mobile, one overlooked strategy is to ground your marketing in a content strategy that is defined by the needs of your core audience targets. Their needs, pain points, struggles, and aspirations become the foundation of all your content development. This results in increased customer engagement and retention. Why? Because through both a content strategy and data AI-driven algorithms, customers begin to feel that the content you create around your brand is custom-made for their needs. And that's addictive!

Fintan Costello

Fintan Costello is an experienced public speaker and the Managing Director at Bonus Finder. Fintan’s passion for online marketing has led to the development of innovative strategies and solutions. Fintan is found in the expert judging panel for the eGaming Review & Global Gaming Awards.

“Surprises birthday notes…”

I always look forward to surprises on my birthday. I am sure I’m not alone on this. Everyone loves surprises!

If you want to retain your customers, go beyond your services or products. Offer them free gifts and discounts when they least expect it. Or, you could just send them surprise packages or offers that don’t have to cost you a fortune.

In fact, Bonus Finder sends handwritten notes to its customers on their birthdays to let them know how much the brand values them. As the brand takes the time to write each letter manually, it’s a big gesture. It lets customers feel that they are a part of something bigger.

Marc Atiyeh

Marc Atiyeh is the founder and CEO of Pawp, the first-ever digital health pet clinic that provides unlimited access to licensed vets 24/7 as well as a $3,000/year pet emergency fund. Pawp was inspired by Marc’s two dogs, Chelsea and Fluf.

“When you acquire a customer, it’s important not to immediately move on to acquiring the next customer…”

Of course, you'll need to consistently gain new customers, but that doesn't mean that you should completely forget about your current customer list now that they're signed up for services. If you want to retain your customers, check in with them regularly and be sure that they are aware of any new features or updates. Not only can this make them feel as if they are still of value to you, but it can even provide the opportunity for additional sales and referrals. That definitely falls under the header of win-win.

Keith Eneix

Keith Eneix, the President of TautUSA, has been providing natural beauty transformation products since 2013. Keith has been helping people transform their skin from the inside out for many years and enjoys sharing all of their insights with the world.

“Many businesses overlook how much value and potential revenue you can get from emailing your email list…”

Those people signed up because they want to buy what you're selling and they like your product. Forgetting to send them a note a couple of times a month will only help them forget about your products and services. When that happens, your email starts going to their spam folders because they will be less likely to open them after a while.

If you're unable to dedicate time to it, make sure to designate someone to personally respond to those emails, as it will ensure there's a live human behind the screen and business. It's important to point out that working on current client retention is cheaper than trying to acquire new customers all the time, so keep in touch with them and offer perks that only people on your list can get, such as special promotions, early-bird discounts, or anything that would make them feel like they're part of a special club. This keeps them coming back for more, and it keeps them loyal to your products and services.

Michael Humphreys

Michael Humphreys is the Director/Founder of Z Grills Australia.

“The most overlooked strategy that is effective for retaining customers is exceptional customer service…”

The moment that the customer reaches out to your communication channels and inquires about your offers, you have to exert total effort and attention to their needs. It is important to take note of every detail as if they are the only client for the day and you are the perfect person to attend to their need or to resolve their most pressing problem. When clients feel special, they naturally gravitate toward your brand and stay loyal. This strategy works well alongside providing high-quality products and services.

Andrew Taylor

Andrew is the director and founder of Net Lawman, an online legal document template platform established in 1991. They work with businesses and individuals to provide legal and financial advice to ensure that they are making the most of what is available to them.

“An overlooked strategy that boosts customer retention is to simply provide excellent customer service…”

We often think that surveys, prize draws, and gamification are the winning strategies. Although they are effective, nothing really beats having excellent customer service to complement other techniques in order to retain your loyal customer base.

Alexa Fernandez

Alexa Fernandez is the Director of Digital Experiences, Marketing & Sales at Digitally. Alexa has years of experience in marketing and online growth strategy and has consulted with household-name brands including Nissan, DirecTV, and Welch's. Alexa is both a Google Partner and Microsoft Advertising Partner and has led omnichannel strategies for multi-billion dollar companies in both the U.S. and South America.

“The most overlooked strategy to increase customer retention is showing your value…”

We often do a great deal for our clients. However, the reality is that if we don’t tell them it was done or show the value of it, the client may not realize it.

For example, in the digital marketing and SEO world, we see this a lot. An agency may prioritize SEO work on a specific service page and rankings will go up, but that is never conveyed to the client.

The way to show value is by showing the client the edits made, showing the rankings report, and then showing the new conversions for that service and the additional revenue generated due to the work done.

This makes it clear that the new revenue generated is solely due to the additional work done, which allows the client to see the value of your service. Clients most often discontinue a relationship or service because they no longer see the value. Always remember, clients are rarely upset with the price they pay if the value they get from it makes sense.

Emilia Wong

Emilia is the Content Marketing Team Lead at M&P International Freights. Their team creates freight forwarding content for their company's blog and social media channels.

“A strategy that is often overlooked when it comes to increasing customer retention is creating a customer feedback loop…”

This means collecting feedback, passing on the data to the right teams, and responding to the

Feedback. A customer feedback loop provides the opportunity to:

• understand how customers feel about your product/service,
• what they think can be improved, and
• what needs you have yet to meet.

Feedback collection

Some methods of collecting feedback include surveys, focus groups, and pre-launch testing. If you are using surveys to gather feedback, it is important to provide a mix of multiple-choice and open-ended questions. This allows you to maximize the feedback that you get from customers without making it too difficult for them to complete the survey.

Passing on the data

Once you have gathered the required information from your customers, it is critical that the information is shared with the right teams.

Responding to feedback

The last step is the most crucial in closing the customer feedback loop. Dropping your customers a reply to thank them and inform them that their feedback has been received and taken into consideration by the team will make them feel heard. Subsequently, they will be more likely to share ideas or constructive criticisms in the future.

Gathering more feedback

Once you have completed this loop, be sure to reach out to your customers for feedback again, whether it is annually or biannually. This ensures that you continue building and nurturing relationships with your customers.

Boyd Norwood

Boyd Norwood is the VP of Marketing at Nozzle.

“Make sure to respond to people within minutes of them reaching out…”

Because when it's on their mind is the best time to help them. And even if they are angry or frustrated, talking with them immediately will go a long way in alleviating their frustrations.

Michael Hammelburger

Michael is the CEO of Sales Therapy and has been the top-rated sales rep 7 years in a row in multiple firms. Michael founded Sales Therapy to help business owners stop fearing sales calls and see them as the opportunity they really are.

“Selling a product or a service as a consultant rather than as a salesperson can…”

Significantly improve the customer retention process and experience for everyone involved. Most people can recall a time when they have suffered through a hard sale by a sales rep who was only interested in closing the deal. Customers do not appreciate feeling as though their salesperson only sees dollar signs.

On the other hand, when the prospect or customer feels as though they and the sales rep are on the same side, it improves trust and decreases resistance. The consultative relationship allows the representative to make higher-value sales. This improvement is a direct result of their understanding of the customer's needs and the value of meeting them.

Along with an increase in customer satisfaction, this leads to a better long-term relationship between the customer and the service or product provider. Customers who feel understood by an empathetic sales consultant are more likely to have overall positive feelings about the product or service. In the future, when they have additional needs for something similar, they will be more likely to ask the same provider for advice.

Staying in touch with your customers is a proven strategy for increasing customer retention, but developing and managing a regular engagement strategy requires a lot of effort. MagicBell’s complete notification system makes it easy to reach your customers wherever they are and how they prefer, all while ensuring that users don’t receive the same notification twice. With MagicBell’s easy to implement notification system, you can launch a cross-channel notification strategy in just days, without breaking a sweat.