6 Best CRM Practices For Increasing Customer Retention

How companies conduct business and retain customers has changed. If your company doesn’t have customer relationship management (CRM) software to keep track of your customers during their journey, you can be sure that opportunities are falling through the cracks. 

The best sales CRM is an indispensable tool that gathers customer profiles and data at every point of interaction. Also, It provides the marketing team with data to understand customer behavior and create buyer personas that are on point. However, It gives the sales team access to purchase records and aggregates communication from all channels, including socials, for the customer service team. 

Tracking customer retention metrics is very important because it gives you an idea of which segment or buyers are the sources of recurring income and opportunities to upsell. It also explains the churn rate or why you lost buyers.  

Retain customers with these CRM practices: 

1, Review Your Client List Periodically 

Ensure all customer data is updated and the contact or entry is unique. A well-integrated CRM tracks the customer journey from every touchpoint, so you see every page, blog, email, and chat interacted with.  

The CRMs usually record the first and last names of every contact or customer. Unfortunately, capturing multiple entries for a single customer is possible. When this happens, it can lead to confusion, anger, and anxiety to the point that the customer leaves in exasperation!  

Bear in mind that the data captured can contain unintentional errors and duplications like the following: 

• Using the full name and nickname will be seen as two separate accounts. William Davis and Bill Davis will count as two contacts. 
• Using the single name and married name will be seen as two separate accounts. Elizabeth Davis and Elizabeth D. Smith will count as two contacts.  
• Using two different emails may be interpreted as two accounts depending on what CRM is used.  

Why does this matter? Customers want to feel that you value them and respect their time. However, they may need to be made aware that they’re using two or more accounts when communicating with you and get upset when a concern has to be relayed repeatedly. 

2. Personalize Interaction 

The CRM can capture company size and income—data that can help you develop a buyer persona. To develop useful ‘buyer personas’, collate information based on the CRM data (e.g., Job Title, income, company size) and insight from your customer service team, social media manager, sales team, and marketing team.  

Tailor your messages by keeping a good grasp of demographic information—an insight on whatever ‘sparks joy’ among your products and services. With CRM software, you can also automatically log sent emails to tailor and personalize future customer interactions. Knowing your customer profile and segmenting your audience is more than just a marketing and sales tool for directing to appropriate pipelines. It enables you to retain customers because communication is on point. 

3. Nurture Leads And Retain Them As Customers 

Without a robust CRM in place, leads captured from chat, socials, phone calls, email, and filled-out forms on the website (e.g., newsletter subscription, eBook) are encoded on spreadsheets that can get corrupted. Precious leads can fall through the cracks and end up bad-mouthing you on social media for neglecting their needs. 

Having a CRM reduces data recording errors and enables contact with a rep or agent who can nurture the lead with additional information or offers. Tracking the customer throughout the buyer journey and meeting needs even before the ‘buy-in’ is appreciated by the clients, who can now make informed choices based on the information you’ve given them. 

4. Your Wish Is My Command  

Obtaining valuable information from a customer’s digital interaction gives an idea of whether the customer interested, buying, or leaving. Just as you see which pages or blogs got the least interaction, you’ll also see what worked. Also, Stay connected by giving your segmented audience more of what they need. It’s an opportunity to add calls to action in eBooks without sounding like you were pitching. 

What’s a success story like using this principle?  

Suppose a brand used its CRM to divide its audience into hyper-segmented groups. It enabled the company to target specific buyer populations with personalized offers. Also, It created a community among its followers (mini-Facebook in situ) who interact with the brand and one another. It created its community based on CRM data–-discounts, gifts, and offers what customers expressed, and they got it!   

5, Give Your Social Media A Boost 

If your audience segmented and you have multiple branches, customers will likely engage you from different platforms. For instance, you may have customers on Instagram, where your content may be more visual than those on LinkedIn and Facebook.  

Some kinds of CRM software make it easy to engage in real-time, and you can see how customers are interacting without too much effort on your part. Without a CRM, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the numerous notifications on your phone vying for your attention. The CRM allows you to reply in real-time or reasonably close to it.  

Your audience isn’t good at delayed gratification. With many players in the field, using the CRM to respond to any social comment quickly makes customers feel valued.    

6. Keep Your Sight On The Numbers 

With a CRM, you can automatically generate customer retention metrics like ‘customer retention return rate, customer churn, revenue churn, repeat customer, loyal customer rate, and lifetime value, among others.  

The numbers don’t mean anything if they aren’t used for strategic action. Have you priced yourself out of the market if customer retention is low? In this case, you can offer something for returning customers who’ve been away for some time. If product sales are low, you can offer free shipping or a discount on the next purchase to sweeten the deal and improve the retention rate.   

The numbers help determine opportunities for upselling and cross-selling and whether your company will benefit from loyalty programs. 

Conclusion 

The CRM is an all-in-one tool that enables all brand segments to come together as one well-oiled piece of machinery. Aside from being an important tool for sales, marketing, and support, CRMs can boost customer retention by keeping buyers happy and troubleshooting why loyal clients left to bring them back.