The world is never going back to 2019, and the ways we live, work, play, and learn will only continue to change. The way forward is to adapt and learn new behaviors.
And in this world relationships are more important than ever. Developing those relationships though can be challenging. Chasing that elusive growth curve many companies have ended up neglecting the metric that truly signals the health and sustainability of businesses. Customer Retention.
If you don’t value, understand, and serve your customers, you’re always going to struggle to hold onto them.
Cultivating initial customer engagement into long-term - the ongoing activity requires a data-driven yet flexible approach. Increased attention to conversion in the on and off channels has merged into a customer experience that appreciates the in-person connection, one that’s individual but scalable and founded on forging connections that are relevant, meaningful, and personal.
Marketing is thus more about building the relationship and having a 360-customer view, big picture thinking, and definition of a clear strategy focused on ensuring that each customer feels like they’re part of a productive, long-term, mutually beneficial relationship. Above all, retention requires humanity or in other words, you must learn to communicate with them in ways that feel human.
At the end of the day, it’s all about meeting customer needs and helping them solve their problem. If you don’t, somebody else will. There are fewer and fewer barriers keeping unhappy customers from simply making a switch to another company when having a poor experience. According to Braze, this is a costly problem that now adds up to $1.6 trillion in lost business annually.
Customers expect empathy, reassurance, and comfort. They want outreach and experience that is thoughtful, responsive, positive, and surprising. In short, human experience is paying off.