If you are running a company, one of the things you should be obsessed with is customer retention.
If you cannot get your customers to keep coming back to you to make another purchase or get another order, then you are going to find it very difficult to grow your business.
Why is customer retention important?
To answer that, there are two things you have to know;
- It costs 200% more to get a new customer than to keep an existing one.
- You are 70% more likely to sell an already existing customer on a new product or service than a new one.
Although these are simple facts, most businesses, particularly in Zimbabwe, don’t adhere to these; they do the exact opposite.
They invest a lot of money to advertise, and when they get the customer, they fail to retain them.
Let me give you an example;
Last month, I had a problem with one of my car tyres. To get the tyre replaced, I thought of company X because it had been aggressively advertising on TV, Radio, Social Media; they were everywhere.
I called the company and was greeted by a stone-cold voice. I wondered if that lady had been forced to come to work. Because I was desperate, I proceeded to visit their garage.
When I got there, with my usual smile, I greeted the lady who maintained a stony face and went straight to the point; By this time, I was now feeling scared because the rest of the company from the guard at the gate maintained the stern, unpleasant statures.
My disposition was that I now had to leave that place as soon as possible, so I just purchased my tyre, did not bother with getting it fitted and went to a different outfit for the fitment, vowing to never return to that other company.
If you are investing in acquiring new customers, make sure you have the team on the ground ready to service the customers and to ensure that they keep coming back.
It doesn’t make sense to invest a lot of money to acquire new customers when you are doing nothing to take care of the ones you already have.
