Every successful company goes through a growth period in which they can barely keep up with demand and the flow of new customers coming in. During these times, your main focus is on optimizing the product and getting it out to customers. But these periods are typically followed by slower ones in which sales to new customers lag—and it is during these phases that it is critical to take steps to nurture your relationships with existing customers. Ensuring that you hold onto the customers you already have is super important to maintaining steady revenue streams and keeping your business afloat during down times. Here are some strategies your customer service and customer success teams can use to nurture and build these lasting customer relationships.

Stay top of mind with customers

 

You don’t want to disappear from your customers’ lives as soon as they’ve purchased or subscribed to your product. As long as they remain customers, you should be a continued presence in their lives. There are a number of ways you can do this, depending on how directly you want to contact your customers and how often. You can follow up with them all individually on a pre-determined timeline based on when they began using your product to make sure they are satisfied. You could subscribe your customers to an email newsletter that delivers content or updates about your products, a strategy that allows them to choose how much they want to engage with you, if at all. You could offer discounts or product add-ons to existing customers that you don’t offer to new ones—even if they choose not to take advantage, they will have received the message that you are there and offering and thinking about them.

 

Improve your services

 

Even if your products have been well received in the past, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t always be working to make them better. While it’s true that some people are averse to changes in the products they use every day (think, anyone who avoids updating their phone when a new version of the operating system comes out), they will never turn down an update that expands their capabilities or improves their experience in some way. In fact, even if they aren’t expecting frequent updates, they may be surprised to discover that there aren’t any after a period of time. All this to say, you should always be working on your products and services and looking for ways to improve them and help them meet the needs of your customers.

 

Listen to feedback

 

Speaking of the needs of your customers, you can learn a lot about what they are looking to get out of your products by listening to their feedback. Tracking the inquiries and complaints customers are making, the direct feedback and criticism they are submitting, and even the conversations they are having amongst themselves in customer communities or on message boards will help you tailor your products to your customers. Just as your services are always evolving, your customers are too—taking steps to ensure that this growth happens concurrently is critical to building lasting, meaningful relationships with your customers that will transform them from one-time to lifetime supporters of your business.

We know that this is a lot to ask of your customer service and customer success agents on top of the work that they are already doing. But giving them a quality call center platform to work in, like CallShaper, will make their jobs that much easier. Contact us today to learn more.