If you have a calling setup or a setup where you deal with clients daily, you might have encountered angry clients. These clients can be stubborn but important for your company to retain. Most of these clients no longer want to work with you because they feel that your services are no longer beneficial. Have you ever wondered why this happens?

Many questions might come to your mind, especially when you own a business where client retention is a major part of your yearly revenue. In this article, we will help you find out why and how you can retain your clients.

Importance of retaining a customer

Most companies and owners have commented that retaining a customer is much cheaper than hunting a new one. Moreover, it costs more than five times to find new customers than to retain one. Your customer retention rate tells a lot about your business and its health. If you have a low client retention rate, there is a high risk that you will not last in the market longer. There are two ways through which you can retain your clients. Your priority is to make your product top-notch. However, if your product lags on some part, your customer success team plays a vital role in providing qualified customer service skills and retaining your customers. It is essential to do the right thing at the right time before your client is on the verge of canceling. Following are some questions that your customer success specialist can ask themselves while retaining a client:

•         Why is the customer canceling?
•         Is it a surprise for you, or did you know this was coming?
•         Can this issue be resolved?

Once you find the issue – dig deeper and figure out why you could not detect the issue earlier. Moreover, determine what attempts you should have made to avoid this inconvenience. Once you know the answer to these questions, nothing can stop you from being a successful customer success specialist.

Understanding the needs of your customer

You must collect your customer’s tone and determine what they expect from you in future calls. You can use this approach for your loyal customers, high-value customers, and your former customers. Your customer success team can easily determine these questions once they know why the customer bought the product and what their expectations are.

Simultaneously, your customers need to trust you and your product. This means that you have to build a rapport with your customer. Once you have built a good relationship with your client, you can control how the customer will proceed in his journey. Building a rapport is the most important customer success skill. It helps your customers to feel safe about the services that you provide them. Moreover, a good rapport will keep your customers happy because they start to like you.

Asking questions to build a rapport

If you are a person who does not talk much on the call and tends to reply with a simple “yes” or “no,” – we have a problem. Asking open needed questions would not allow your customers to be open and comfortable with you. Your goal is not to make your customers bored while you talk. Moreover, close-end sentences will not allow you to keep a hold of the call as most of the talk done will be by the client.

Remember – five W’s can help you talk and be more open with your client: who, why, what, where, and when. For instance:

•         What kind of changes would you like to make?
•         When do you expect these changes to be delivered?
•         Why would you like to make a change here?

In addition, asking reflective questions is a perfect way to keep your customers engaged. For instance:

•         Are these practices working for you right now?
•         Tell me what you would like to achieve here.
•         Would you like to make a change here?

Build a workflow

Once you set a campaign for your customers, it is essential to set up a workflow. You need to determine the red flags before time and identify many risk factors. For instance, make it a practice to check on your customers. Ensure that they have replied to your emails, check if they have been canceling your meeting requests, etc. Building a workflow will identify these issues, and you will know that their emotional attachment and interest are decreasing.

Conclusion

The key to having long-term clients is to have a client success team that retains and understands your customer. The sooner you get a customer success specialist, the better it is for the health of your business. It is essential to understand that your customer looks up to you, and only you can solve their concerns. If your customer wants to cancel your services with a qualified customer success team, you do not let that customer walk out the door.