3 Steps to Significantly Reduce Customer Churn

Customer service strategy experts used to be okay with wooing customers until the time of purchase and then leaving them to fend for themselves. That customer service strategy is no longer sufficient. 

In this age of technology where customers have access to unlimited opportunities to search for and evaluate competitive offers, you don’t want to let your customers wander. You need to keep them loyal to your company and brand. 

How? With consistently superior customer service.

Of course new customer acquisition has to be part of any growth strategy. But we know that it can cost 4 to 10 times more to pull in new customers than it does to retain and grow current ones. Your customer service strategy has to work toward client retention as well as new client acquisition. Smart companies who recognize this are being proactive at reducing “churn”—the term for customer changeover. 

Here is what leading customer service and contact centers are doing:

1. Analyzing what customers value in their service.
   We know what they don’t like…long wait times, rude service reps, and promises made but not kept. But do you know what they do like and what would cause them to stay? Assemble the data and study it to learn why they stay and why they leave. 


2. Investing in improving service delivery.
   Use the data from your customer research to inform the critical few changes that need to be made in the service end of your customer retention strategy. service reps may need training in communication skills to improve their interactions over the phone; you may need to give them more latitude in solving problems; you may need to hire more reps to shorten wait times; you may need to put a system in place that will reward the behaviors you know will keep your customers satisfied; you may need, in fact, to overhaul the whole process.


3. Prioritizing the issues.
   But, you say, this all costs money! It does. However, so does fixing mistakes and losing customers. We advise you address the most egregious reasons customers leave you. Focus on what customers find most annoying, on the kind of treatment that drives them elsewhere. 

Make sure that your customer service strategy attacks one problem at a time—get your customer service to a point where the churn is reduced, your reps are happier and, most important, so are your customers. 

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