Yes, you read that right. Customer retention and loyalty drive more revenue than new customers do. Therefore, having a plan in place to ensure customers stay loyal can increase profits without having to invest a lot of capital on making it happen.

What is customer retention, and why is it important?

Customer retention is the process of engaging existing customers so that they keep coming back for an organization’s services. It’s different from customer acquisition and lead generation because the customer an organization is trying to retain has already been converted, at least once. Organizations must have a proper customer retention strategy to ensure long-lasting relationships with their clients. Customer retention leads to loyalty and they soon become the organization’s brand ambassadors – generating new customers through word of mouth.

Customer retention is measurable, and this useful formula from Hubspot is a quick way to determine an organization’s customer retention rate:

Once the customer retention rate has been determined, the organization can then investigate the reasons for customers leaving, and try to determine if there were similarities in the reasons for them deciding to go. If it turns out that the reason is a gap that can easily be filled, the company would have already taken a massive step towards retaining current and future customers without having spent a penny on the process.

Increasing customer retention

Now that we have a firm grip on the importance of customer retention and the profitability it can bring to a company, let’s explore how customer retention rates can be improved.

1. A roadmap for customer relations

   As in any other relationship, the one between the company and the customer needs to have a direction – both parties need to know where the journey is heading and have a clear vision of the milestones and goals they hope to achieve together. It makes sense to chart out this journey in the initial stages of the engagement with a customer. If a roadmap for the different milestones that need to be achieved with them and the different ways the company would be able to continue offering services to them can be devised early on, companies will find that retaining customers get much easier than they imagined. As time goes by, the plan will need to be revisited and revised to ensure they are still relevant and aligned to the customer’s evolving end goals.

2. Consistently delivering good experiences

   Consistency equals trust, and nobody likes surprises in a business setting. Customers like to know what they can expect and be able to trust that organizations will consistently deliver the results they require. One important way to ensure consistency is to build processes for all important customer-centric events: onboarding calls, kick-off meetings, project planning, etc. Make all social media channels consistent, so that no matter where the customer goes, they see the company projecting the same message, and are able to reach out through different channels. Having processes makes the company predictable and reliable – both qualities that really hold value in the world of business. Organizations will be far more efficient and will have insight into what needs to be addressed when with each customer.

3. Quality feedback

   Customer retention cannot be improved until companies understand why customers choose to stop using their services. Once the reasons have been figured out, they can work on reducing your customer churn rate, and proactively deal with potential issues.Gathering feedback is crucial to understanding how well companies are serving customers and understanding why they might choose to leave for the competitors. When companies can identify and rectify the errors they’re making as early as possible, they increase the chances of being able to serve the customer to their best potential, thereby winning their loyalty. It is important to reach out to people across the customer’s organization – from decision-makers to members of the team that the organization interacts with – to ensure the company gets a complete picture.

4. Memorials for every milestone

   Make a big deal out of every milestone reached with the customer – when the anniversaries for these milestones come up, remember to celebrate it again while thanking them for their patronage. Research shows that people remember bad memories over good ones, and they’re more likely to share the negative experiences they had online than share the positive ones. This means it’s always worth the extra effort it takes to remind the customer that something great happened – emphasize all the wins, big or small, and make the customer central to the celebrations.

5. Regular updates on results

   When companies consistently update customers on the progress they’re making and the ROI being generated for them, it makes it much harder for them to decide to leave, as they would have tangible results to prove the company’s efficiency and reliability. This means organizations need to put a system in place to track results and report on the metrics they find that are relevant to the customer’s goals. Always be transparent about the numbers and results found and discuss opportunities for improvements.

Experion’s customer retention success story 

A fledgling in the industry when it started out 14 years ago, the story of Experion’s success is the proverbial story of the success of the underdog. Built on sheer hard work, perseverance and a brilliant talent pool from an Indian State known as “ God’s Own Country” – Kerala – blackrock has today proved the worth of putting the customer first in everything it undertakes.

This year, blackrock celebrates ten years of engaging with some of our most loyal customers. From across sectors like transportation, retail, and education, they are proof of our consistent effort to stay customer-centric and deliver consistent results. You don’t have to take our word for it – you can read what our clients have to say about us here.

Some of our most satisfied, long-standing clients say this:

“We believe we will use them for updates in the years to come.” – Manager, Food Product Trading Company, Bahrain

“I was very pleased with our results and wouldn’t hesitate to use them again if I was given the opportunity.” CTO, Mobile Development Startup, Phoenix

blackrock has over 14 years of experience in delivering software solutions to early-stage enterprises, start-ups, and Fortune 500 companies. If you’re looking for a reliable IT partner to assist you on your journey towards digitization, drop a mail to sales@blackrockdxb.com. 

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As the call progressed, the client laid out their objectives and requirements, and it went something like this:

“The module should allow us to capture depositions, and as the case progresses, we need to be able to record subpoena related documents too, if any.”

Deposition? Subpoena? Latin had always seemed like a useless, dead language to our young, enthusiastic team of engineers. Until today, that is. 

As the call progressed, the conversation continued to be peppered with Latin terminology that nobody in the team could understand. The project team, especially the Business Analysis (BA)  team, was in deep trouble.

Realizing the anxiety that was threatening to overwhelm his team, the Senior Project Manager at Experion, in a stroke of genius, found an unconventional yet perfectly efficient solution. The best way to learn these Latin words, and understand how to use them in context, was to hear it being used in its home ground – an American courtroom. So as part of the homework for the project, everyone on the Business Analyst team was instructed to watch the NETFLIX Drama Series Suits.

Suits is an American legal drama television series, and it turned out to be the perfect classroom to understand the American legal system, as it follows the journey of an attorney who starts working for a New York law firm. 

Watching Suits helped Experion’s business analysts grasp a better contextual understanding of words such as subpoenas, deposition, affidavit, class action, and discovery in the context of an American courtroom. This helped the team comprehend almost all the common legal terminologies used by the client with relative ease. Armed with the understanding gathered from watching SUITS, the Business Analyst team’s confidence improved dramatically (don’t mind the pun). Interviews and brainstorming sessions with the client stakeholders during the requirement elicitation phase of the project became easier than what the BA team expected after that first call. 

This helped Experion’s project team to swiftly develop and deploy the web-based legal process management solution.As the project closed its first major phase on a triumphant note, the end-users were thrilled at how easy their lives had become with this solution in place. The attorneys’ promised drinks and dinner for the team when they came to visit New York.

Who’d have thought that something as inconsequential as watching a TV show could have a butterfly effect on so many lives? This only goes to prove how a little bit of unconventional thinking can yield spectacular results!

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Customer delight Vs Customer satisfaction

Customer Delight is the process of absolutely exceeding a client’s expectation of your services to create a surprisingly remarkable, positive experience for them with your brand, thereby improving their loyalty to you. 

It is different, and far harder to achieve than ‘customer satisfaction’, which is what most companies unwittingly aim for, and most likely achieve. The difference lies in the fact that ‘customer satisfaction’ only aims to meet the customer’s expectations, and while that is often rewarded with a certain level of satisfaction too, it doesn’t incite any loyalty, nor does it cause your customer to turn into an ambassador for your brand. 

In fact, if your business is dependent on maintaining and improving relationships with your clients, you should even think of investing in a custom-made Customer Delight Index – a measure of how delighted your customer is with your service. Surveys or interviews can be tailored to suit your organization’s requirements, ensuring that you include all factors that play a role in the quality of your services.

How to consistently delight your customers

Focus on problem-solving:- Always offer your customers solutions that fix their problems keeping their specific requirements, wishes, and needs in mind. Here’s an example of how we helped a global logistics solutions provider based out of the United States to develop a cloud-based logistics and transportation management solution, keeping the client’s requirements foremost in mind.

Provide future-forward solutions:- While quick-fixes are appreciated in the moment, they quickly lose their value in your client’s mind. Go beyond your client’s immediate need for a solution and provide them with the means to pursue their long-term goals, if possible, by equipping them to handle their future needs on their own. For instance, when blackrock took over the first on-demand EduTech platform in the Middle East, the platform was reimagined and developed with technologies advanced enough that in the future it could even be extended as a virtual classroom – which is one of the capabilities the client imagines the product evolving into having and is working on developing.

Always exceed expectations:- The best way to stand out from your competition is to make an indelible impression in the minds of your customers, and the best way to do that is to take them by surprise and do something unexpectedly positive. A good example of this is how blackrock developed and deployed a mHealth platform for a leading European non-profit, despite the many challenges that cropped up because of COVID-19 – the team executed a smooth delivery with near-perfect quality in spite of having to work from home during the critical go-live phase, drawing much appreciation from the client.

How customer delight affects the success of a company

Enhanced profit & improved ROI

Delighted customers tend to stick around. When you prove to your clients that the ROI they enjoy when working with you is unmatched, they will stop looking for alternatives. Statistics show that it costs five times more to get a new client than it does to retain an existing one – this directly impacts your revenues and the amount of profit you take home at the end of the day.

 Increase in sales

In an age where clients have more options to access services than ever before and have more channels to be vocal about their experience with you, Customer Delight becomes imperative to retaining them. Delighted customers also automatically turn into brand ambassadors – and having your clients sing your praises is a proven way to acquire more clients – they will undoubtedly refer you to their peers and contacts, one of the best sources for new business. Getting your clients to write reviews of your services while they are delighted will impact the decision making of over 93% of all potential clients who come after.

Assures edge over competitors

Tougher economic conditions world-over have resulted in customers seeking more than usual from their service providers  – and choosing to stay customer-centric and devoted to providing delightful experiences for them will result in your company has a definite edge over your competition.

Here’s an Experion-example of how we delight our customers

Our fantastic team recently took on the daunting task of re-engineering a complex, 30+-year-old Foxpro-based billing application and rewrote it in a 14-month Phase 1 engagement.

blackrock went to the client-site in September last year and began the interaction, sowing the seeds of trust. Soon after, our team delivered very encouraging results from a well-planned Discovery Phase. The client was already impressed. 

We delivered our first major release earlier this month, and here is what the CTO shared as feedback : 

What blackrock built replaced our 20+-year-old billing entry application and as we come to a close on day 3, we have 9,796 billing entries and counting (So close to 10k)! 

The blackrock team was highly responsive and made it a priority to be available for support, at nearly all hours, the weeks leading up to and during Go Live. They resolved issues quickly and are a key component of this project’s success.

We have received an overwhelmingly positive response from our employees, the end-users,  too! Here is what a few of them had to say:

“Seriously, this billing system is awesome. Well done. When you come to NorCal I am buying you a drink!” – Attorney 1

“The new billing system is great and idiot-proof so it works perfectly for me.” – Attorney 2

“I like the program!  Beats our old one by a mile.” – Attorney 3

For more real-life testimonials of how blackrock has delivered Customer Delight, you can read reviews from some of our most delighted customers on Clutch – where we have consistently been rated among the Top Software development companies in the world. 

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With advancements in technologies, availability of real-time data and analytics, retail industry will be transformed to meet consumer preferences as they evolve. Unlike the old days, the consumer has access to the product or service information and different purchase options. Online purchases have elevated the customer experience with more personalization. According to IDC Research, by 2020, at least 55% of all organizations will become digital with new business models and digitally enabled products and services.

To remain competitive in this rapidly changing industry, retailers must leverage the latest digital technologies and transform themselves to meet the changing consumer behavior. They must leverage digital transformation solutions and create a new business model by placing the customer in the anchor position.

What is digital transformation?

According to SalesForce, Digital transformation is using digital technologies to create new — or modify existing — business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and market requirements. This reimagining of business in the digital age is digital transformation.  In retail, it is nothing but moving from a product-centric approach to a customer-centric approach by extending hyper-personalized customer experience.

What are the challenges retailers face in their digital transformation journey?

Multi-channel buying experiences:

With the staggering growth in e-commerce, in-store purchases have come down. A good majority of consumers still prefer retail shops as they want to see, touch, feel, and try the product before they make a purchase. They may gather product information online and make an offline purchase or try the product and order online. This shows that consumers prefer a combination of both. Retailers who try to bridge the gap between online and offline and go ‘phygital’, stands a better chance to win the customer. Retailers must leverage the latest technologies to create an omnichannel customer experience, which enables them to extend personalized offers across channels.

Demand for seamless, superior customer experience:

A seamless customer experience allows both online and offline stores to complement each other rather than compete to keep customers coming back for more. Customers expect in-store retailers to keep track of their online purchases and treat them as loyal customers when they visit the store. Retailers must use advanced analytics for capturing customer data and produce meaningful insights to create an integrated customer experience.

Customer loyalty is driven by experience:

Customer experience fuels customer loyalty than just product features. Even if the retailers offer superior products, the customer is delighted only if they provide him with a superior experience. Though pricing offers and promotions are building blocks of customer experience, hyper-personalization is the critical factor. Retailers who can predict customer behavior, anticipate their needs, and extend personalized offers exclusively for them via their preferred channel creates a profoundly loyal customer.

Key elements of digital transformation strategies in the retail industry

In-store experience

Ensuring better customer engagement and rich in-store experiences enable retailers to connect with customers through all touch points and influence buying behavior. They can leverage beacons, IoT devices, and smart shelves to delight customers with in-store navigation, real-time product pricing, and offers.

Optimize consumer journey

Optimizing end-to-end customer experience across the customer lifecycle journey plays a crucial role in mitigating customer churn and ensuring customer loyalty. Retailers must leverage data analytics technologies to understand customer behavior and preferences to provide tailor-made personalized offers or product recommendations in each stage of the customer lifecycle journey.

Advanced payment solutions

Frictionless payments or digital payment terminals enable consumers to move from cashless to cardless, significantly reducing transaction times.

Customer service

Advancement in artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies has changed customer care interaction by automating routine services which don’t require human intervention. Using a digital bot powered by AI & ML technologies enable retailers to answer standard questions, handle returns, help customers with product specification queries, etc. efficiently and thus improving the customer experience.

Digital transformation is key to success for retailers, perform or perish

Hyper-personalized customer experience stands tall in this digital economy. To win the modern customer, retailers must create a superior shopping experience that sets them apart from the competition. They must establish an exceptional omnichannel experience irrespective of the channels to win retail customers.

blackrock partnered with one of the leading retail chains in Australia for transforming their legacy systems to match the changing business scenario. Our solution enabled them to reduce the legacy maintenance costs, and it leads to a 30% increase in customer response time. To know more about our Digital Transformation services for the retail industry, drop a mail to sales@blackrockdxb.com

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