If you're a business owner, then of course you want to do everything you can to not only gain new customers, but to keep your existing customers loyal to you. Unfortunately, customer retention isn't always easy; customers may leave as a result of a bad experience with one of your employees, a bad product, or even a lower price offered by a competitor. While there are all kinds of customer retention strategies out there, there's one that's been proven to be the most successful.
Develop and Enforce KPIs Among Employees
Because the majority of customers who leave a business do so as a result of poor customer service, the single best thing that business owners can do to retain customers is to implement Key Performance Indicators (also known as KPIs) within the workplace. KPIs should be tied to a company's goals and should be easily measurable. They should also be included in each employee's contract.
Some examples of KPI's that can directly improve your customer retention rate are benchmarks such as:
- Response time to customer inquiries.
- Time between receiving and order and fulfilling it.
- Ratings on customer surveys.
- Quality control levels on finished products.
- The actual measurement of your customer retention
At the end of each quarter, all employees should receive a KPI review; during this review, managers and supervisors can determine whether or not each employee is meeting those key performance indicators as outlined. If not, then corrective actions may need to take place, additional training may be required, or the employee may not receive a special bonus or incentive.
On the other hand, if KPIs are met, then the employee should be rewarded in some way, whether it be financially or even just giving him or her some form of recognition within the workplace.
How KPIs Improve Customer Retention
There are many ways in which implementing and tracking KPI requirements among employees can help boost customer retention in any business. For starters, employees will have a greater incentive to deliver service to customers that reflects the values and goals of the company. As a result, customers are more likely to be satisfied with their service. After all, an employee will know that he or she could be reprimanded for not delivering the level of service expected and will strive for excellence as a result.
When it comes to customer retention in your place of business, you need to do everything you can to keep your customers around so your company can be as successful as possible - this is good for you, your customers, and your employees. Therefore, if you don't have a KPI strategy in place among your employees, now is the time to start thinking about developing and implementing one.
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