Build an Insanely Loyal Customer Base

This guest article is brought to you by Lessonly, sponsor of the 2018 Customer Service Revolution.

 

There’s no doubt that building loyalty among customers is more important than ever before. When competitors are just a click away, it’s crucial for companies to go above and beyond to create strong relationships with their customers. If they don’t, they can lose that customer in the blink of an eye.

So, how do companies keep their customers coming back again and again? Lessonly’s CEO, Max Yoder, and COO, Conner Burt, joined OpenView for a discussion on how we’ve designed and optimized our customer experience efforts. Here are three steps for any organization to successfully build and retain a vibrant customer base.

Customers should always be top of mind. Listen to the entire podcast to learn what great customer retention looks like and how to improve your efforts.

 

Know and understand your customers

Customers are the foundation of long-term business growth and success. But it’s not enough to just acquire new customers—companies need to show current customers that they’re valued. Conner notes that “At the end of the day, it comes down to building good relationships with your customers.” We’re lucky to have some of the best customers on earth, and we love spending time with them and helping them reach their goals. But we also need their feedback. Many organizations wait until their customer leaves to gather feedback on what worked, what didn’t, and why they left.

We’ve found that it’s beneficial to gather continuous feedback from our customers. By spending time with people who love our product just as much as those who may be having trouble with it, we’re able to gather valuable insights that help us improve the customer experience. This enables us to create and improve products and services so that learners have a better experience—and our customers stay customers.

 

Create a culture of superior service

Customers have a lot of power. The moment they receive less than exceptional customer service, they’ll likely take their business elsewhere. In fact, 33% of Americans say they’d consider switching companies after just one single instance of poor service. Businesses can alleviate customer churn by instilling a customer-centric approach in everything they do.

While many organizations promote a service culture for their customer experience or support teams, it’s beneficial to spread that culture across every team—from sales to product. Max highlights the importance of leaders setting clear expectations, “By modeling a specific behavior, it shows that everyone in the company should act that way—whether you’re dealing with a customer or not.” This mindset is extremely beneficial to growing teams—it builds a foundation of customer service that every employee can contribute to. Then, as new members join the team, they quickly learn what it means to deliver superior service.

Customer service training drives superior service. Take a tour to see how customer service teams do better work with our powerfully simple training software.

*Related – Lessonly is a sponsor of the 2018 Customer Service Revolution.

 

Focus on high-priority and high-impact

Organizations that try to prioritize customer retention oftentimes focus on too many things at once. While it’s easy to get bogged down in customer data, teams that have the most success in retention use that data to identify and limit the number of business objectives they tackle at one time.

Focus matters, and we’ve slimmed down the list of things that we experiment with to devote our focus to the most high-priority, high-impact objectives. Max also notes, “Look at what’s working and how you can do more of that, instead of putting all of your attention on the one thing that isn’t working.” This strategy, also called Appreciative Inquiry, motivates a team and provides a greater perspective on how to effectively increase retention.

Building and retaining a loyal customer base takes planning and intentionality from an entire organization. By promoting a service culture that prioritizes objective—and puts the customer first—companies can turn loyal customers into raving fans.

 

World-class teams drive business success with Lessonly

The most successful companies know how to build a loyal fan base. We’re lucky to work with some of the greatest people on earth—they make coming to work a joy. But they also know how important training is to team performance. Hundreds of customer service and sales teams across the globe use Lessonly to learn, practice, and perform. Take a tour or watch a demo today.

 

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