Right now, we are on the cusp of an economic downturn. Inflation and interest rates are soaring, the stock market is plummeting, and organizations are being forced to make some difficult decisions. All companies are going through the exercise of evaluating their investments, deciding what to cut and what to keep, what strategies to use, and simply, how to weather the storm.
We’ve been here before, however, and we know that during uncertain times, protecting your customer base is the most important thing you can do for your business. Customer retention is the lifeblood of recurring revenue enterprises, no matter what the external economic circumstances may be. So, while marketing budgets may get slashed and hiring may get put on hold, what can’t wait is the urgency to protect growth from your existing customers.
Now, more than ever, you have to take steps to solidify your customer relationships and reorient your business from an acquisition-based operating model to a customer value-focused operating model. A business model dependent on new customer acquisition will struggle to thrive during an economic downturn as the cost of acquisition eats away at profits. Compared to the considerable investment needed to capture new customers, revenues from existing customer relationships are essentially free.
Being the partner that your customers need is key to encouraging them to maximize their investment in your products and recession-proofing your business. Let’s take a look at how you can protect your current customer base and solidify these crucial relationships.
How to Solidify Customer Relationships During an Economic Downturn
Maintaining strong customer relationships is key to the long-term success of both your customers and your organization, which is why it is vitally important to proactively deliver value through customer success best practices during both good and bad economic times, such as:
- Monitoring Customer Health: Stay on top of your customer’s health and update it daily. Ensure your team and other departments are all aligned on your data and any issues or opportunities to ensure a smooth internal flow of communication around your customers.
- Detecting Risk: Identify, categorize and monitor the customer events, activities and behaviors that indicate when customers may need attention and why. Utilize data-driven insights and set up alerts to engage proactively so you can avoid any mishaps and seize opportunities.
- Communicating Clearly and Proactively: Keep open channels of communication with your customers and don’t wait for them to come to you with a problem. Reach out and check in with them regularly. Provide valuable and personalized communications with the right messaging at the right time to ensure you stay relevant for their business and drive efficient growth.
Totango’s modular customer success platform makes it easy to implement these best practice with features like our SuccessBLOCs that include pre-built tools and templates for every stage of the customer journey and our Customer Experience Canvas, which allows you to design, run, measure and iterate your entire journey from one place.
Focus Your Resources on What Matters
During uncertain times, it’s important to focus your resources on what matters most to your bottom line: protecting, growing and maintaining your existing customer base. Don’t leave this important strategic initiative to disconnected spreadsheets, monolithic platforms, modern work tool band-aids, or force-fit tech solutions. Totango is the only composable customer success software that can give you the visibility and digital capabilities you need to effectively support and provide value to your customers in any economic climate. Let us help you. Get started with Totango for free today to get all the tools you need to protect your customer relationships and start recession-proofing your business.
