Customer Acquisition is critical for every business and without a steady inflow of customers, brands cannot grow and scale. From big to small, every business strives hard to earn new customers while simultaneously retaining their existing ones. Some level of dissatisfaction is unavoidable in every organization so if a business is keen on growing at a rapid pace, it must reduce customer effort and churn. With QEval, customer effort, and churn can be greatly reduced.
What is Customer Churn?
Customer churn is the fraction of customers who disassociate from the brand in a particular period. It is often represented in percentage, for instance, if your product has 10,000 users at the start of the year and it reduces to 9,000 users by the end, then the customer churn rate would be 10%.
Experiencing a certain amount of churn for a period is inevitable for just about any brand, as user behavior and requirements are constantly evolving and competitors may come up with better strategies to steal their attention.
Projecting a churn rate is not enough, companies must put in the effort to reduce their customer churn rate. The high amount of churn results in huge losses to brands and hinders their progress toward achieving set goals.
To keep the revenue cycle active, organizations must innovate and chart out vigorous strategies for improving customer retention and reducing customer effort and churn.
What Causes Customer Churn?
Brands cannot avoid customer churn but they can identify the reasons behind the churn and be proactive. Doing so will help bridge the gaps and come up with plans to combat customer churn. Below listed are some of the common causes of customer churn.
Price :
Asking the customer to pay a higher price for a product without justifying it with improved quality, is one of the key reasons why customers leave a brand. If customers are getting a similar product at a lesser price, they are more likely to choose the cheaper brand. Brands must create value for their offerings by delivering promised quality and meeting customer expectations.
Competition :
Marketplace competition is unavoidable for every brand. No matter what your brand offers, there will always be competition. To beat the competition, brands must have reasonable pricing, a great line of products, and top-notch customer service. Being honest to customers and delivering what is promised is a reliable way to make customers stay.
Poor Customer Experience :
If customers are having a difficult time with a brand’s offerings, then they will not stay. Delivering poor quality products, not paying attention to customers’ concerns, and not providing adequate customer support are key reasons customer experience can be negatively impacted.
How to Reduce Customer Effort and Churn?
Determine Churn Causes
Before working on strategies that can combat customer churn, brands must take a deep dive into finding the root causes of the churn. Brands must completely evaluate their products and processes and identify their drawbacks. After this evaluation, the next step will be to focus on what competitors are offering and their product prices. Then by acting on customer feedback and identifying customer concerns a brand can be on its way to reducing churn.
Besides this, the easiest way to know why churn occurs is by paying attention to customer feedback. Brands must conduct an exit survey, call customers directly, or send personalized emails to obtain this information. By doing so, brands can easily understand customers’ distress and make changes that will enhance customer experience.
Educate User
As a brand, your job does not end when the sale is finalized. In order to keep customers engaged; they must be educated about your offerings and any new products as they come out. Not having enough knowledge about your capabilities frustrates users and impacts their interest in your brand.
Providing support and educating customers makes a remarkable difference to the overall customer experience. Taking steps such as providing user guides to customers, video tutorials, giving demos, and informing customers about new upgrades can be very useful. Efforts made toward positive customer experience are always fruitful when it comes to reducing customer effort and churn.
High-quality products are not going to appeal to customers unless they have hands-on experience while using them. Educating users is a reliable way to showcase the full potential of brand offerings and keep their trust intact throughout their association with the brand.
Simplify the User On-Boarding Process
The onboarding process says a lot about the duration a customer will remain with a brand. If customer onboarding is not smooth, they are likely to lose interest in the brand and may look for other options. A brand should try and simplify the onboarding process. Complicated and time-consuming onboarding can overwhelm customers and give rise to frustration and dissatisfaction.
Streamlining the onboarding process and establishing good communication with customers conveys the message that their chosen brand or YOU, values their time, money, and expectations.
Train Team for Cancelations
Dealing with a customer who is considering canceling is not an easy task, as retention is at risk. With a team of well-trained contact center agents, cancelation calls can be turned into new opportunities for retaining customers.
Train your brand representatives to effectively deal with interactions where chances of customer churn are high. Well-coached agents will easily handle dissatisfied customers during critical conversations and simultaneously enhance their experience while giving resolutions.
Continuously Evolve Brand Offerings
What a customer is searching for is subject to change depending on how the market trends. Brands must continuously evaluate their offerings to meet customer expectations and needs. Once customers are satisfied, they are more likely to stay loyal to your brand, and with good offerings and superior services, customers will keep coming back.
Improving the quality of what your business offers will not only help brands reduce customer churn, but it will also help to edge out competitors and build robust brand value.
Reward Brand Loyalty
There isn’t a customer that would not love to get a little extra than what they have expected and paid for. Giving discounts, coupon codes, extra validity of subscriptions, festive offers, etc. are proven ways to flatter customers and increase their loyalty toward your brand.
These actions make customers happy and feel valued. Offering rewards is a proven way to reduce customer churn and cement brand loyalty.
Focus on Customer Engagement
Engaged customers are critical to a brand’s success. A brand that is well-versed in keeping customers engaged, wins the tough races easily. Create quality content that revolves around what your brand offers and consistently share it with your existing customers and prospects. Keep an eye on what customers are saying about your brand on different channels and social media. Prepare a team of customer service representatives that effectively interact and provide solutions to your customer concerns.
No brand can afford to continuously lose customers. However, brands can work to improve key areas to reduce customer churn.
Retaining customers is not easy and requires constant planning, deep diving into the analytics, and acting on customer feedback. With QEval, you can identify customer sentiments and identify strategies that can resolve existing customer issues and reduce customer effort and churn. Contact us to know more and see how QEval can help your business today.
