“The purpose of a business is to create a customer who creates customers.” – Shiv Singh
The easiest way to grow business is both simple and challenging. According to the quote, if a company were able keep its customers long enough, they would not only bring more customers for the company, but would also help grow the company’s business. Hence, retaining customers is the easiest way to grow business for any kind and size of company. Research shows that businesses lose about 20% of their customers each year, because they do not pay attention to customer experiences and on serving customers well. Research further shows that in some industries customer churn rates go up as high as 80%, costing companies heavily, and yet companies fail to ‘plug these leaks’, thereby causing huge losses in their finances and reputation.
The most important fact is that in any company 20% of customers provide 80% of the business. Imagine if even one of the customers, of the 20% were to leave a company. Customer retention alone can result in a company being able to double the number of its customers over a few years. The more customers a company has the larger and faster it would grow. The fact is that there are several advantages of retaining customers – sometimes unexpected. Companies that make even minute changes in their customer retention strategies would see the ‘trickle effect’, going through the business and multiplying several times over. The result would be a successful company with robust and long-term profits. Retaining customers is the easiest way to grow business since it is possible to do, and would not cost a company too much to implement retention strategies.
Any company would lose some customers – owing to a number of reasons. This could be despite best efforts to keep customers happy. However, while companies may know how many customers they lose, they forget to measure how many of their customers may have inactive accounts, resulting in loss of business, while still having to maintain these customer accounts and relationships. The other mistake that companies make is to make huge investments in gaining customers, and then ‘forgetting’ about these customers in a bid to gain a new set. The result is that the existing customers soon begin to feel neglected and ignored, and could soon walk out the door. This back and forth of customers is a huge dent in the finances of a company, since then it would spend another set of resources to gain customers to replace the lost ones. The easiest way to grow business would be keep customer attrition to the bare minimum by ensuring that your existing customers are happy, and would continue providing repeat business and double up as brand ambassadors, attracting more customers for the company.
Buyer’s remorse is a common yet ignored factor in business today. A company’s representatives could do a fabulous job of selling to customers, but soon after completely forget about the customers, and fail to respond to their needs. This behaviour from the company raises feelings of remorse, and this is usually when customers leave. Instead, a company must continue to care for its customers, allay their apprehensions, and display the company’s dedication towards them. It is important to thank the customers for their business, and continually show them why doing business with your company is the right decision. Such ‘treatment’ will ensure that customers ‘stick’, providing repeat business and even referrals. It is extremely imprudent for a company to make so much effort, spend a large number of resources, and invest huge amounts of time to gain new customers, and then waste all of it by ignoring them, such that they leave to give their business to another company.
As mentioned, the easiest way to grow business is to keep the company’s existing customers. However, we also mentioned that losing customers is a business reality. Customers that leave a company owing to poor service and shoddy treatment, may never come back, and in fact could spread a lot of negativity about a company. These customers must be appeased, even if they do not wish to come back. On the other hand, if some customers leave a company owing to different reasons – may be because they relocated, it would make sense to regain their business. Research shows that it is a lot easier to regain even lost customers than it is to gain new ones and it would make sense for a company to approach its dormant customers with irresistible offers, at the most opportune time in order to get them back. It is necessary for a company to approach non-buying customers to remind them of the business, inform them of new products and offerings, check as to what is stopping them from buying, and do the best to allay any fears or apprehensions they may have. Since they would have already bought from the company previously, they would know the quality of products and customer service – all they need to know is that your company is dedicated to serving them and cater to their current and future needs. Gaining such customers again would lead to enhanced revenues, and could lead to these customers becoming the most loyal and profitable customers a company may have ever had.
Among the top priorities of customers today is service excellence. Hence, the easiest way to grow business would be to provide top class service consistently, treating customers so well that they would be compelled to let others know, thereby attracting prospective customers too. As mentioned several times, customer service must permeate throughout a company, with every employee having equal responsibility of ensuring that each customer receives the best service, and feels important when interacting with anyone in the company. Such service excellence is what would differentiate one company from the next, ensuring that not only do customers stay on they also contribute to attracting more business for the company. Customer brand ambassadors are by far the most potent tool and one of the easiest ways to grow business.
Any business should know that with so many choices and companies to choose from, customers would be unlikely to stay unless they were treated with care, given a lot of importance and attention. It is the responsibility of a company to ensure that every customer feels valued and would know that the company genuinely cares for them, and holds their business in high esteem. It would be very hard for a competitor to trounce such service or ‘steal’ customers from another company. The greater the number of long-standing customers, the easier it would be for a company to grow its business. Connected closely with such behaviour is the fact that every company must have a robust system of staying in touch with its customers. This could be through emails, events, phone calls, specially designed offers, saying thank you for their business, publicly acknowledging a customer’s achievements via social media, and other such methods to stay connected with customers. Doing so reassures customers that the company cares for them and their business, thereby encouraging them to provide repeat business, and letting others know about how they can experience it too.
We are sure that every company out there would love to find that ‘sweet spot’ – the easiest way to grow business and retain their customers for the longest time. It takes time and sincere effort to keep customers happy, but the effort is worth it. As long as a company has the right intent and remains focused on its customers, it would never be hard to grow and sustain the business. The onus lies with you – are you ready to accept the challenge?