Your customers are vital to your overall success and how your company grows. While growing companies often focus on finding new markets to move into, your current clients and customers are a critical element of your growth strategy. Ensuring you retain your current clients and find ways to upsell them can help your company grow more efficiently.
It’s true that your Sales and Marketing divisions must be exceptional for your business to grow, but those teams alone can’t sustain growth long-term without customer retention. It costs more money to bring in new clients than to retain existing clients, which is why customer success is vital to your growth.
Every business with customers should invest in a customer success strategy, focusing on keeping customers happy.
Happy customers
- Stay with you longer (or are more likely to continue renewing their subscriptions)
- Promote your product or service to others
- Are more likely to buy more from you because they know, like, and trust you
When you help your customers be successful, you will lower your churn rates, further boosting your revenue.
The Customer Success Manager
Consider hiring a customer success manager who is responsible for
- Ensuring your representatives help customers get the most from your product or service
- Developing your organization’s customer success strategy to engage and retain your clients
- Encouraging, analyzing, and acting on customer feedback
- Leading creation of materials needed by your company’s representatives
- Advocating for solutions to address clients’ challenges
You can foster customer success by implementing a program based on the needs and expectations of your customers, specifically. It’s also vital to educate your customers about what your organization does, the products or services you offer, and your culture. Anticipate the questions they’ll have and create a knowledge base that addresses those queries.
Ensure the onboarding process is as smooth and efficient as possible by providing them with all the resources they need to get started and ensuring a representative is available to answer their questions immediately or walk them through the process if necessary.
Make sure all teams communicate, especially customer success. They know first-hand what clients are saying about your product or service, so they’ll know if people think there’s a disconnect between what sales have told them and the final product or if a process isn’t as efficient as promised. Keep the lines of communication between your teams open and encourage regular meetings where these matters are discussed.
Promote loyal customers
Make sure your long-term clients feel special and remain satisfied with their investments. Consider creating a customer loyalty program or building an online community for your customers to interact with each other and communicate with you.
By focusing on your existing customers, you will not only stabilize but grow your revenue, which will further enable your overall growth strategy. Successful customers are happy customers, which are crucial to your growth.
