Customers are an essential part of any business’s success. As a company, you need to make sure that your customers are happy and engaged so that they remain loyal. The only way to do this is through customer retention. But before you can strategize on how to improve your customer retention, there are a few things you have to consider first.

Customer retention is about more than retaining customers.

You might be thinking, “Here’s a way to increase customer retention.” But that’s not exactly the point. Customer retention is about more than retaining customers. When you focus on retaining customers and nothing else, you miss out on other growth opportunities.

For example, if your company has a product that isn’t selling well, there may be an opportunity to cross-selling other products or services to existing customers without making them feel like they’re being pressured into buying something they don’t want or need. This could also help boost sales overall and create loyalty among your customer base without putting too much pressure on them (which might cause them to leave).

Know what you are doing right

You need to know what you are doing right. You also need to know what you are doing wrong. The same goes for your competitors and customers—know what they want and don’t want. You can only do this by listening to their feedback, especially the negative feedback. If someone says something is wrong with your product or service, you must find out why and how that person feels about it. That way, if there’s an issue with the business or product itself (or even just one aspect of it), then finding out about this issue can help prevent similar problems in the future from arising in the future.

Establish a baseline

A baseline is a quantifiable measure of your customer’s experience over time. It can be either positive or negative, depending on what you’re tracking, and it provides a starting point for comparison with future data.

Baselines are important because they help you determine whether customer retention is improving or worsening over time. If your baseline shows that customer retention has increased since the last check-in, then you know that your strategy is working as planned. But if the number of people staying with your company has decreased since the last check-in, then something needs to change immediately—because customers are leaving in droves.

When you lose customers, study why they are leaving

One of the first steps to improving your customer retention strategy is learning why customers are leaving. It’s good practice to learn about why customers leave so that you can address their issues and have them come back. When analyzing what went wrong, look at all aspects of your business including:

• How effectively were you able to communicate with them? Did they feel like they had an open line of communication with someone who would listen if something goes wrong? Or did they feel like they were being ignored?
• Was there a disconnect between what they needed and what you provided as a company or service provider (maybe this is true for every client)? Did some clients want more personal attention while others wanted less? Did some clients need more guidance while others needed less hand-holding? Did some clients want more hand-holding than others?”

The key reasons why customers leave and what you can do to retain them is a wide approach. The most important takeaway is this: customer retention isn’t just about retaining customers, it’s about identifying the things that drive your company forward and using those insights to help you succeed.