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In this article:

• Why Customer Loyalty is Important
• 14 Ways to Win Back Lost Customers

1. 1. Decide if you want your lost customer back
   2. Ask why they left
   3. Take responsibility
   4. Engage with your customers
   5. Encourage their contribution
   6. Measure customer satisfaction
   7. Create a customer service-centric environment
   8. Personalize communication
   9. Inform customers
   10. Use social media
   11. Reward customers
   12. Don’t let them leave in the first place
   13. Promote your product
   14. Build more rapport

Win Back Lost Customers: Tips

Why Customer Loyalty is Important

Loyal customers are profitable. Customer loyalty improves profits by: –

• encouraging repeat business
• generating referrals
• establishing a favorable price premium
• reducing the operating costs for a business

It’s important for companies to find new customers, but a business’s existing customer base can determine the foundation of their future success.

Focussing on providing a good customer experience is key to increased revenue. Whether great customer experience becomes more important to driving sales than product or price is yet to be seen, but many industry experts believe so, and the following statistics back this up.

Each year, $136.8 billion is lost by U.S. companies due to avoidable consumer switching. (CallMiner)

Over half of Americans have canceled a transaction due to bad service. (American Express)

A third of Americans say they will leave a company and switch to another after just one incident of bad service. (American Express)

Also, one in three customers will pay more money to receive a better level of service. (Genesys)

15 Ways to Win Back Lost Customers

Decide if you want your lost customer back

First of all, decide whether you want your lost customer back? Not every customer is ideal and depending on your relationship the best decision could be to let them leave happy, so they continue to refer to you.

Ask why they left

Ask your customers why they left. Let your former customer know they are valued and that you’re interested in knowing why the business was lost, and of course, what you can do to win them back.

Targeting common pain points will also increase retention across the board. Gaining feedback will help you understand your customers, but you will have to take action if you want to win back lost customers.

Take responsibility

Admit that you could have done better, and what you will do to make changes. Work on the basis that there are logical solutions to fixing any previous problems and don’t make it sound like you’re following rigid guidelines that can’t be changed to help your customer.

Assuming responsibility could win back lost customers but getting hold of your ex-customers will be more difficult once they’ve left. After poor customer service, a customer is likely to avoid contact with you.

Engage with your customers

Your main goal should be to fulfill all their needs and deliver full satisfaction. Ask your customers for feedback regularly while they are still customers. Engaging with them will show you want to make a difference. There are many surveys available, and through different media, asking questions like “would you recommend our business to others”?

Encourage their contribution

Encourage customers to express their concerns and share feedback, possibly by offering rewards. Make it apparent that you value their contribution.

Measure customer satisfaction

Measure customer expectations and set goals for your sales and service teams. Metrics reflect how your customers are feeling, but only generically. Integrate surveys within your sales platforms.

Create a customer service-centric environment

Don’t just incentivize staff for sales but also reward them for providing excellent service. Not all bonuses should be based on sales figures and service and sales should go hand in hand. Build a customer service-centric environment and share good news stories. It’s unlikely you’ll be able to fake a good relationship with your customers and as a leader, you should devote resources and strategy to better customer experience.

Personalize communication

Personalize your communication with your former customer and tell them they have been missed. A generic email will not work as they will want to know they are special. Provide your undivided attention.

Inform customers

Provide any information about new products or services since they left. Offer discounts or promotions.

Use social media

Social media marketing is important for businesses to connect with their customers and build relationships. Use this tool to improve customer service, develop public relations, and increase customer acquisition. If your previous customers take to social media to complain, they must be responded to, preferably in a private conversation.

Reward customers

Other than service, most exiting customers will be trying to save money and reduce costs. New customer deals make existing customers feel less valued, so ensure they are rewarded enough.

Don’t let them leave in the first place

Don’t let your customers leave in the first instance. Have a well-developed customer retention department to specifically work with customers intending to walk away. Try to assure your customers that things will change.

Promote your product

Believe in your product or service and tell your customers the positive aspects that made them ‘sign up’ the first time. Your product is the reason they connected in the first place so add value through your products and services. Offering high-quality products/services, that are keeping up with expectations, will drive customer loyalty.

Build more rapport

Build more rapport. Ask or remind your customer what was good during the relationship. Cultivate a mutually beneficial relationship and let your customer feel invested in the future of your business.

Increasing customer loyalty is a business tactic that advantages an organization now and helps to ensure its survival in the future. Combating churn and boosting customer retention will help your organization grow; it’s rational to think keeping an existing customer is cheaper than acquiring a new one.

What are the main reasons your business sees churn? What other tips can you provide on how to win back lost customers? Please comment in the section below.

Up Next: 

• THE CYCLE OF CUSTOMER LOYALTY: 8 TIPS TO LIVE BY
• Face-to-Face Closes 2.5x Better, But Inside Sales Makes 7x More Calls
• 6 FORECASTING STRATEGIES FOR MORE ACCURATE SALES [INFOGRAPHIC]

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on May 16, 2018, and has been updated for quality and relevancy.

Customer health checks are more important now than ever and due to the fragile current state, they need to be done with tact and compassion.

We have put together a list of five tips to ensure your customer health checks are valuable and well received, so you can be a trusted partner and not just another vendor.

Do a Monday Morning Check In

Start the week off with a quick email or Linkedin message to your customer’s primary contact for a quick check in. One of my favorite account managers for a vendor I was working with introduced me to this idea. I knew that every Monday morning, he was going to send me a quick email to ask how we were doing and if there were any product issues that we were having that he needed to address with his team internally. Most of the time, I would blow these emails off, however, any time there were small issues that weren’t urgent, I knew I could respond to his email with that list and he would jump in to help.

If this is done consistently, you will have an open window of communication on a weekly basis as an additional, pro-active point of contact to help beyond traditional customer support. Customers want to know that they are being heard and this is a great way to help support that.

Expand Your Customer Circle

Often times we tend to only communicate with our primary contact in an organization as a way to get a temperature check of the business. However, something to consider is that stakeholders, who were initially involved in the buying process of your product, eventually hand off the day-to-day admin work to someone else in the company who is typically on the front lines and more involved in the day-to-day. Don’t limit customer health check to just the primary contact, as they may possibly be too far removed from the actual day-to-day issues and we may get a false positive that everything is ok when challenges may exist.

Calls to their support or sales line is a great way to get feedback from the actual users of your product. You will learn a lot about your customer and their needs with this approach, so you can identify ways to tweak processes or help uncover other product features to increase customer satisfaction.

Don’t Be An Ambulance Chaser

During a time of Crisis, a well-intentioned email with a call-to-action at the end for some sort of up-sell or expansion opportunity can come across as predatory and ill timed.  Consistent contact helps to naturally solve this issue; however, we all have customers we have lost contact with and need to find a way to re-engage to offer sincere help during these challenging times.

Great companies today have figured this out. They are creating a no-strings attached offering as a way to lend a helping hand during a time of need for customers and partners that are struggling. Identify ways you can help without expecting any additional business in return. Karma will return the favor.

Share Best Practices

Every company has been affected by COVID-19 and this is a common thread we are all challenged with. What a great opportunity to share ideas and best practices around people and processes that you have found to be helpful and have nothing to do with your product.

At XANT, our sales team is often selling to other sales organizations and sales leaders who are experiencing the exact same challenges we are with this new environment. This gives us a great opportunity to commiserate together and talk about something other than the weather to build common ground. Take a little extra time to talk about some of those non-product related issues and ask for advice from your customer on how they might resolve them.

Offer Training

Moving your company remote will introduce all sorts of new challenges that you had not realized before.  These challenges put an incredible amount of stress and pressure on leadership to provide solutions to your team members so you can continue to be effective while not in the office and find some path to normalcy.

Take some time to dig into your customers new normal and help to identify any of these new challenges that your product may help solve. Once identified, offer to provide one off training sessions to help their team adjust and get up to speed. Show your customer what metrics they should be tracking to measure success and failure so they can quickly identify areas that need improvement and make the necessary adjustments.

Using these 5 Tips on your health checks during this pandemic will help you be a better partner. They will also strengthen your business relationships as we are all in this together and need each other’s support to successfully come out the other side and hit the ground running.

Author
Daren Reschke
Head of Emerging Enterprise Sales | XANT

That would be madness. Right?

But  it’s what businesses are doing everyday; pouring all their resources into attracting new customers while neglecting the customers they already have. They are missing out on a huge opportunity.

Current customers are high value assets who are far easier to re-engage and resell to.  In fact, research has shown it’s 5-25X more expensive to attract new customers than retain and convert current customers into repeat purchasers. 

But what are the best ways to look after and resell to existing customers?

Below are  five of the best tips on retaining customers to maximize ROI, create brand evangelists, and improve loyalty.

Reward Customers For Their Loyalty

One of the best ways to foster loyalty is to be proactive in providing even more value to your existing customers.

The most common form of loyalty building is with a financial incentive for repeat purchases. You offer users a discount off their next purchase or service billing, they come back to you so you can establish yourself as one of their go-to providers.

However, you’ve got to look beyond the widely adopted methods and look at how you can provide even more value to build loyalty.

Here are a few loyalty and reward programs you can turn to in 2018:

• Gamification. Turn loyalty into a game your users want to win. By assigning points to actions like purchasing or referring friends, engagement increases. Through that engagement, you can build brand loyalty naturally.
• Non-monetary programs. You don’t have to offer cash or gifts to reward users. Sometimes, feeling like they’re a part of a bigger movement is all that’s required. CEB surveyed consumers and found that customers are loyal not to brands, but to beliefs.
• Increase value through partnerships. The more you help customers, the more loyal they’ll become. By partnering with a complementary service provider, you can drastically increase the value of your offering. PriceIntelligently discovered that the more integrations you have, the more reason people have to use your service, which ultimatelylowers churn.

Employing these techniques is a cost effective way to encourage existing customers to repeatedly purchase. At the same time you are nurturing them into brand evangelists who eventually do your marketing outreach for you.

Identify Ways to Stay in Touch Post-sale

It’s important to develop a roadmap for communication after sale. A consistent approach builds trust with customers and, with trust, comes long term loyalty.

For best results, you want to keep communication channels as predictable as possible and fall in line with your customers’ existing expectations.

Email has long been a great medium for offering support post-sale and is definitely something that should be explored. Email is also one of the more effective methods at offering post-purchase cross sells.

In the last few years we’ve also seen the rise of the live chat software. These systems operate much like email, but  are able to offer instant feedback and offers. Certain studies have even shown them to be something the general public is open to using.

With the growing abilities of and interest in AI chat, now is a great time to get involved. However, if you are considering getting started, be certain that it links to your wider CRM software for more effective tracking.

By integrating with your CRM, you’ll ensure your entire sales team is on the same page and are able to more effectively follow up with leads.

Establish a Trustworthy Billing Process

After a customer has made a purchase comes the exciting bit where you get paid. Don’t be too hasty to send your bill though. It’s important to think about the billing experience, as is likely the first communication you will have after a sale.

Invoices should first and foremost be clear and easy to understand. Provide simple payment methods, and, as simple as it sounds, make sure all the information is there.

Detail exactly what work was carried out or what’s included with the product with a simple breakdown of where costs were incurred. You want to avoid lack of clarity, as this will destroy loyalty. There’s no room for ambiguity when it comes to the bottom line.

While invoices are typically pretty straightforward documents, that doesn’t mean you can’t add a little brand personality to them. Using an invoice template is a quick an easy way to a clear, easy to use, professional looking invoice.

Just make sure you customize it to make it your own and reinforce not only your brand image, but also your brand’s ideals.

Communicate on an Individual Level

Use the information you have, or gather new information – eg. their birthday – to optimize the customer’s experience. You could send them a Happy Birthday email or even a gift, or simply reference in communications what they are interested in. These small touches can make all the difference when it comes to loyalty.

Also make sure you know their communication preferences. How do they like to be contacted, and how often? Do they appreciate a joke or like to keep things formal? How do they interact with your site before purchasing? Perhaps you could add a message to help them along the way.

You need to test as many different personalization track engagement to find out what works best with your audience.  So don’t be afraid to try new approaches as long as you measure the results.

Continuously Improve and Expand Your Product or Service

Identifying why customers churn is key to understanding where you can improve. If you are already in regular contact with the customer, it’s as simple as asking for honest feedback.

You can do this via email, over the phone, or using online forms. Don’t bombard them, but do try to gain feedback throughout the sales process, from key decision makers as well as more junior members of the team. This will give you the most comprehensive idea of where to improve.

Customer feedback combined with accurate metrics is the killer formula that will help you evolve your customer experience to be the best it can be.

For years, I felt like one of the deck officers on a Federation Starship, charting the unknown and exploring brave new worlds. I earned my stripes under the watchful eyes of the James T. Kirks and Jean-Luc Picards of the SaaS era, leaders like Marc Benioff, Frank van Veenendaal, Phil Barker and Maria Martinez.

Customer success was everything to me … a role, a team, a creed. Our focus on the customer helped us plot every course, navigate every murky nebula, and compel engineering to flood the warp core if we needed to move faster to make a customer successful.

When it came time to pilot my own starship, I knew I needed a company with a similarly trained crew and the same navigation charts. However, I needed an opportunity to explore a frontier where no one had gone before. I found the right ship in XANT. I’m on the boundary of that frontier with the company’s Predictive Cloud.

Applying predictive forecasting to customer success

In May 2015, just as I was joining InsideSales, we acquired the incredible predictive forecasting technology called HD Forecast. I was excited at that time to harness that technology to predict our renewals more accurately.

Any customer success professional knows that hitting a renewal forecast is not the prime directive for a customer success team. The primary goal of a customer success organization in a SaaS company is to aid the customer in deriving value from your product.

Customers achieving business value beyond the cost of the license subscription are typically happy, willing to be a reference, and likely to renew to continue to receive the value you are delivering. Happy customers tend to multiply like Tribbles. You’ll need a bigger starship as a result of the success.

Customers who receive no value, or when the value barely covers the cost of the license, are going to find it very difficult to stick around at renewal time. They can be as ornery as a Klingon and as cold as Khan’s abandoned crew on Ceti Alpha VI.

Important milestones on the customer journey

Deriving value is no accident. Most SaaS products require energy from both the customer and the provider. It takes effort to continuously deliver secure, stable and innovative products. It takes similar effort to administer, train and use this innovation effectively.

To highlight these mutual responsibilities, the best SaaS companies prescribe a journey for their customers the moment they start their subscription. Typical milestones on this journey include implementation, onboarding, periodic training and measurement of value.

This journey is very linear as it progresses toward the time of renewal. Many of the milestones are highly quantifiable. Qualitative elements are also important when gauging customer delight through this process.

While I am no data scientist, I did enough research into machine learning and the predictive sciences before I joined InsideSales to know that these customer journey attributes would lend themselves to high degrees of correlation in a predictive model. This is my new frontier.

Now I stand on the bridge looking out into an infinite starscape. Instead of a warp drive, our ship is powered by the Predictive Cloud. Billions of data points from successful and unsuccessful customer journeys are being crunched by some of the most brilliant blue-shirted science officers ever gathered aboard any starship.

They’ll test and retest multiple algorithms and models. Eventually, we’ll have a model we can start testing on actual customers, large or small, no matter where they are in their respective journeys.

A proactive, data-driven approach

Armed with predictive insights, our customer success team can engage more efficiently and effectively to resolve the challenges and issues that would have otherwise impacted the customer’s ability to create value.

We’ll be able to open support tickets on behalf of customers before they even know their app is having an issue. We can suggest training to a team that may have just gone through some abnormally high turnover, even before the customer success manager ever receives a request for training.

If we see numerous customers beginning to struggle with a new feature, we can launch a webinar to help answer questions and improve adoption. The best part is, the model continues to learn and improve with each action we take and each reaction of a customer.

In a few short months, I’m optimistic we’ll be the best practitioners of data-driven engagement in the universe.

Helmsman, one-quarter impulse power. Take us out of space dock …

Learn how data science can improve your sales success in this free ebook. 

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