The new customer-centered economy marks a fundamental change in the business/customer relationship. It’s no longer wise for businesses to focus the majority of their efforts on seeking new customers. After all, recurring revenue business models revolve around customer subscriptions that must be paid for or renewed monthly or annually. But they aren’t a guarantee of revenue; customers can cancel at any time. So, businesses must nurture customer relationships and meet customers’ rising expectations.
Every customer relationship is valuable and, if cultivated correctly, can unlock lifetime value. If you learn how to grow customer relationships, your business can achieve long-term growth in this shifting economy.
How to Grow Customer Relationships That Will Last a Lifetime
A business becomes customer-centric by focusing on meeting customer needs and delivering consistent value. Get started by providing a good experience both before and after the customer signs up in order to show that you’re dedicated to building a long-term relationship. Study the customer experience and learn what customers want from your product and brand. For example, what are your customers’ priorities? Don’t assume you know what value customers want from your brand; ask them directly. Feedback surveys are invaluable for collecting this type of information.
Here are some ways you can implement these ideas and grow your customer relationships:
Create the Value Customers Want
Growing customer relationships is a proactive process that begins with creating value. Customer success teams need to educate customers on the benefits of the product or service, the promised value must be delivered consistently, and customers need to see evidence of the difference it is making in their lives.
Customer success teams can carry this mandate out in their customer engagements. Talk about setting up specific goals, then, use customer success software to track the customer’s usage to determine if and when they achieve that goal. You can highlight a positive outcome by sending congratulatory communications when they reach such goals. These steps will build up the value of your product in the minds of your customers and demonstrate your commitment to customer satisfaction.
You’re looking to create long-term value for customers, so listen to changing demands and help customers get the results they need. When a customer’s goals shift, adapt to support those new needs.
Use Data Wisely
How can you know what customers want from your product? The best way is to analyze customer data in order to uncover behavior patterns. Customer data takes forms such as satisfaction scores, help desk tickets, survey responses, contracts, demographic data and records of every customer interaction. Using this information, you can identify markers that indicate whether customers are achieving value, such as acceptance of upsell offers, and see which customers are not progressing as hoped.
To make sense of these vast amounts of data, it’s helpful to use a customer success platform that will gather data automatically and flag key customer behaviors. This makes it easier to act on such information in meaningful ways.
Nurture Every Customer Equally
Make sure each customer feels your appreciation, even ones who are in lower value categories.
After all, even customers who spend small amounts of money on their monthly subscriptions bring in a lot of revenue when you have enough of them, especially if you retain them for a long time. By showing these customers value, you also open up the possibility of upsells or service upgrades down the road.
Plus, by treating every customer relationship with respect, you will earn a reputation as a company that really cares about its customers. Current customers will be more likely to stay and share positive reviews that will encourage new customers to sign up.
The Benefits of Using a Customer Success Platform
Growing customer relationships can be a complex task, especially when you have large numbers of customers, product lines, or brands, but it becomes much easier when you leverage a quality customer success platform. Such software can help your business become more customer-centric by making a variety of tasks and processes easier for your customer success team to track and manage.
A customer success platform streamlines the entire customer relationship management process. It can track or automate tasks throughout the customer lifecycle, from onboarding through adoption and renewal. Your team will be able to see customer health scores and other indicators of customer status, helping you to evaluate how customers are progressing. Also, customer success software can enable you to draw conclusions and insights from a variety of data streams, even ones that are unfolding in real-time. It can even predict which customers are in danger of churning and give your team the opportunity to intervene, which raises retention rates.
Grow Customer Relationships and See Lifetime Value
In the current economy, customers have high expectations. Meet or exceed those client expectations and your customer success team can become a force to be reckoned with. It’s all about finding out what your customers want from your product or service and then consistently demonstrating how that value is being delivered.
By focusing on growing and deepening the relationships you have with current customers, you will boost retention rates and improve customer satisfaction. And that leads to profitable long-term customer relationships that will keep your business at the top of its industry for years to come.
Totango provides customer success solutions that help enterprises deepen customer relationships. We offer all the capabilities you need to meet changing customer expectations, such as helping you track retention rates, customer health scores, and leads. Request a demo or explore Spark to learn how Totango can make it easier for you to achieve your customer success goals.
