Digital transformation is something many companies have been talking about for years. With recent events, COVID-19 has actually helped to lead the charge in digital transformation across a variety of industries, requiring companies to rethink their strategies and playbooks. The enterprises that will lead the way during these uncertain times will be those that are data-driven, agile, and empathetic. These businesses will be well-situated to speak to, lead, and ultimately retain customers through customer retention strategies in B2B like the following:
- Re-evaluate Current Digital Engagement Strategy
- Make Use of Key Engagement Metrics
- Personalize Communication
- Foster Lasting Relationships
Customer Retention Strategies in B2B for 2020 and Beyond
Customers are more likely to seek out and stay with enterprises that adapt and evolve as needed and that always offer the greatest possible value. That is why one of the best B2B customer retention strategies is to ensure you have an excellent digital engagement strategy that is dialed in and ready to adapt.
Re-evaluate Your Current Digital Engagement Strategy
Digitization has created a wide variety of customer engagement options. A multi-touchpoint approach has quickly become the accepted norm, with customers increasingly expecting multiple ways in which to engage. As such, a customer-focused approach to engagement will become more vital than ever in the coming year.
- Create a digital strategy if you do not have one; if you do, ensure it can scale for your customers and make personalization easy.
- Offer a mobile app that allows you to provide flexible, timely messaging to customers.
- Ensure your customer experience is consistent across all channels and that customers can move seamlessly from one channel to another.
Use Key Engagement Metrics to Drive Iteration and Innovation
Ultimately, customers stay because of quality and value. They expect a high-quality experience and high-value products and services. The best way to deliver those things is to ensure your enterprise is constantly striving to improve through iteration and innovation. You should be tracking key metrics such as:
- License Utilization: It is critical to know how many customers are actually using your product.
- Usage Frequency: This metric shows how much customers are relying on your product.
- Feature Adoption: Tracking what features customers are using and how they are using them can show whether customers are getting value from your product.
Ensure the right data is always available and easily accessible to the right person at the right time to ensure optimal internal operations while maximizing value for your clients. The better informed your team members are, the more adept they will be at understanding your customers’ needs and goals and taking proactive action to inspire their continued support. Tracking, analyzing, and utilizing the right metrics to drive the right changes will be key to encouraging customer-centric growth and success both now and in the future.
Maintain Human Connections Through Personalization
Personalized customer engagement is going to be more important than ever as the world continues to shift toward more virtual communications and transactions. At Totango’s Customer Success Summit, Zoom’s Head of Customer Success Operations Marco Innocenti spoke about the importance of human connections as well as honest, open transparency in communication, saying, “What we’ve found is it [communication] doesn’t necessarily need to be perfect…but it needs to be authentic.” Right now, the right authentic, personalized messaging can connect with customers and encourage them to take advantage of resources available to them.
- Keep track of the progress of customers toward their goals and take note of any changes in their targets or their trajectories.
- Instead of reaching out just to reach out, leverage the data you have to create messages that provide value to your customers.
- Provide personalized product updates, offers, and solutions that speak directly to what they want and what they need. Send tailored “thank you” messages after purchases or renewals.
- Above all, listen to your customers. Now more than ever, one of the best things you can do to retain your customers is to make them feel not only understood, but valued.
Foster Lasting Relationships with Improved Customer Experience
Customers are more aware than ever that they have options. Their choices will only increase as the digital transformation of business continues. Providing the best possible customer experience will therefore play a key role in customer retention strategies for B2B businesses looking to not only survive, but thrive in the coming year.
- Make sure your approach to customer success is goal-oriented and you are able to track overall customer progress at a high level.
- Collaborate with customers to identify specific, trackable targets together. This allows you to determine when a change in direction or strategy is needed to ensure long-term success.
- Review and reassess customer experience in the context of the full customer journey. Understanding the full picture of their experience is critical to understanding what drives them to stay or leave.
- Use customer feedback and usage metrics as catalysts for positive change and help your teams learn to see escalations and churn not as signs of failure, but as learning opportunities.
- Ensure that responses to escalations are swift as well as effective. The more quickly your team can address (or better yet, anticipate) customers’ concerns, the better.
The Future of B2B Customer Retention
As our economy grows increasingly customer-centric and digitally driven, the customer experience that a B2B company provides will become a key differentiator. To ensure an excellent customer experience, organizations need to be able to make data-driven decisions that allow them to adapt and improve processes to deliver even greater value to customers.
The right Customer Success technology will help you track your goals and progress in real-time, adjust your digital engagement strategy with ease, and collaborate with customers to reach desired outcomes, to just name a few key capabilities. Your teams will be able to communicate more clearly, strategize more efficiently, and utilize data more effectively. This will let your enterprise meet and exceed your customers’ rising expectations, ultimately maximizing customer retention and ensuring lasting, mutual, success.
Totango’s customer success products give you the business advantage of acting on customer data. If you explore Spark, you’ll see the platform allows a unified view of your entire customer portfolio, so you can follow the health of any customer at any time. Experience the advantage yourself and get started for free today.
