Wednesday, May 9, 2012

3 Customer Retention Ideas for Retailers

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Expert Author Marci Bikshorn
Retailers tend to put a focus on new customer acquisition, and although this is an important part of running a business, it's also imperative to remember customer retention. In fact, reducing your customer defection rate by as low as 5% could increase profitability by a minimum of 25%! This means that coming up with new (or utilizing old) customer retention ideas is now as important as ever. Here are 3 great ideas to help you retain loyal customers long into the future.
1. Hire a Mystery Shopping Company
Mystery shoppers are professionals positioned to listen objectively and expertly through the entire shopping experience. Not only will these undercover shoppers measure the complete "red carpet service experience," but they'll provide insight as to the impact the ambiance of your store has upon their perceptions.,
Mystery shoppers can not only help you meet goals by allowing you to witness firsthand how successfully you've implemented your programs - both in-store and online they can also help you take action in improving areas that fall short of their expectations.
Some customer retention ideas may leave room for subjectivity and opinion, but mystery shoppers can provide your company with tangible, objective results, as well as video or audio recordings. This information can then be analyzed by your team or shown directly to your employees for improvement.
2. Invest in Customer Service Training for Retail
Utilizing research tools like mystery shopping and audits can help you gain insight into your brand and current customer experience management programs; however, without implementing the results, you would remain stagnant.
How can you make the most out of your results? Consultation and customer service training for your retail team can help you energize your current training program to reflect any new research results you've encountered. Also, by developing a more meaningful reward program within your company, your employees will be more likely to do their best when working with customers' in-store.
Customer service training for retail can help take your retention program from mediocre to excellent.
3. Campaign Lost & Inactive Customer Accounts
You may think that once you've lost a customer, they're gone for good. That's not always the case. You're actually two times more likely to close business with a 'lost' customer than you are with a new prospect.
Similar to lost customers; inactive customer accounts aren't gone for good either. It may seem like they've disappeared, but they may have found a product they needed elsewhere or perhaps the service didn't seem interesting anymore.
The best thing you can do is to contact these customers, via phone or email, and find out their reason for leaving. From there, you can make the necessary adjustments within your programs and find creative ways to bring them back.
Service Excellence Group is a customer experience measurement and solutions provider. Through our innovative programs, we can help you develop effective customer retention ideas and offer intellectual and resourceful answers to give you a competitive edge with a better understanding of your brand image. Find out more about our helpful feedback programs, brand audits, research and customer service training for retail.

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