The Customer Experience as an Antidote to Attrition

It’s a fact: keeping your existing customers costs your company less than getting new ones to replace ones that cancel; and the longer you keep a customer, the more profitable the relationship becomes. How do you retain customers and perhaps even get them to promote you?

Give your customers exactly what you promised, and then give them more. Provide them with an excellent customer service experience throughout the entire customer lifecycle: from sales and installation, though service and monitoring, up to and including cancellation.

While this answer seems simple, the goal is challenging. Providing an excellent customer experience requires leadership from the top down, good policies and procedures, and the right employees, armed with the right training and resources.

Here are some tips for upping your customer-service game.

Implement the highest standards. Some of the key hallmarks of a best-in-class experience for your customers include: positive call center experiences; prompt service times for installation, testing and maintenance, or repairs; the right equipment installed correctly the first time; and knowledgeable and friendly staff in all departments.

View your employees as brand ambassadors. Every time your employees interact with your customers, whether over the phone, online, by e-mail or regular mail, or in-person, they have the chance to enhance the customers’ experience with your company. Invest in your employees and give them the tools, training, resources, and authority they need to be the best brand ambassadors for you.

Give value for free. Another way to enhance the experience of dealing with your company is to provide something of value, at no cost. Proactively providing relevant, timely information (in e-mails, newsletters, bill inserts and on your website and social media, for example) designed to inform rather than sell, is one way to provide added value.

Let go with grace and goodwill. Even loyal, satisfied customers sometimes cancel. Once you’ve done everything you can to retain your customers, make their cancellation experience the best it can be by letting them leave easily and with positive feelings. A positive cancellation experience leaves the door open for customers to return to your company, and increases the chances that they will be willing to act as a promoter and a referral source for you in the future.

Want more information on how the customer experience impacts attrition? Our whitepaper, “Attrition: The Silent Killer”provides key strategies for combating attrition, including using providing an excellent customer experience can be the antidote to attrition.

Have any tips of your own to fight attrition by delivering a great customer experience? Share them with us in the comment section below!