Here are a few recent key paragraphs in business articles:
“My three focuses are employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction and economic success.”
“Hallmarks of the quarter included significant loan and deposit growth, evidence of the success that sales and customer retention initiatives are having.”
“Financial services executives searching for creative and inexpensive customer retention programs…”
Clients can “benefit from…increased revenue through improved customer retention.”
The product “enables managers to improve customer retention and profitability.”
The theme? The tie between customer retention and financial performance. Some of these organizations are creating structures to support customer retention like a “Retention Team” that identifies high-priority at-risk clients and works to retain them. Other organizations are launching incentives with staff and customers alike that promote retention. Still other organizations are implementing what CSS calls a “Customer Relationship Development” strategy to learn customer retention drivers and retain/grow the customer base.
What all these organizations know is that there needs to be a focus and structure around customer retention. When you ask most organizations what they do to retain customers, they point to having a good experience during the sale or having a call center to handle complaints, but both of these are reactive and transactional.
What is your organization doing that is more proactive and relationship-oriented? Do you have a criteria for identifying at-risk clients or customer types? Do you have a proactive method of communicating with customers even when a transaction is not occurring? Is that method personalized and direct? And what is the organization doing to create the supporting staffing structures and incentive plans that promote an organizational alignment tying Mission, Vision, and Financial Performance to Customer Retention efforts?
Challenge your organization and its leadership to make the changes necessary to succeed in retention and growth.
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