If you’re thinking customer relationships are not directly relevant to you, think again. They’re important for everyone in every role. If you aren’t servicing an external customer (or client or stakeholder), then you’re managing or supporting someone internally in your business who is. So today, imagine the impact on your business if you could improve your customer relationships.

Repeat customers are really, really valuable.

More valuable than new customers. Here are the facts:

• Acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer. (Outbound Engine; Forbes Council; others)

• Repeat customers spend more money. 67 percent more. (BIA Advisory)

• Increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can increase profits by between 25% and 95%. (Bain and Company)

• 89% of consumers are more likely to make another purchase after a positive customer service experience. (Salesforce Research)

• 93% of customers are likely to make repeat purchases with companies who offer excellent customer service. (HubSpot Research)

Below are 3 tips to improve your customer relationships, and therefore your retention. Think about how this applies to all your relationships.

3 tips to improve customer relationships

1. Delight them – what are they expecting from you? How can you exceed their expectations today and delight them? How can you delight them the moment you start the piece of work or project with them? How can you continue to deliver against the targets set? How can you build this into your culture?

2. Surprise them – is there something they value that you can provide them that they don’t expect? Something easy for you that is hugely valuable for them? For example, can you use an AI tool to deliver earlier, better, more, or suggest an improvement to them that they will appreciate? Is this something that people will do in your culture naturally?

3. Educate them – do they know what else you can do for them? Do you explain this at the right time in the journey of working with them, in the right way, to add real value to their goals? How helpful are people in your culture to others?

   Some of the organizations I know are over-delivering rather than under-delivering on customer service. This is also not a good thing and will kill your margins. It’s a Goldilocks problem (getting it “just right”). If you encourage me, I will write about that another day.

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Quote of the week

“The most meaningful way to succeed is to help others succeed.”

Adam Grant

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Clients, partners and friends

On the topic of customer retention, read this: One of my clients, HowToo has launched an online platform for mid to large organizations that need to onboard customers at scale. This is unlike alternatives such as disjointed videos, clunky instruction manuals and costly manual training. HowToo makes it easy for you to create intuitive customer education, because it was designed by behavioural experts. For a demo, contact Lisa Rodgers and mention my name.

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Keep turbocharging with a culture-friendly approach 😊🌱📈

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About Lisa Carlin

Lisa specialises in accelerating strategic projects.  She has pioneered a Culture-Friendly approach which she has used to deliver and guide executives through over 50 transformation programs. Her early career was with McKinsey and Accenture. In 1999, she started her own business (now part of FutureBuilders), working with prestigious global organizations and B2B Tech.  Lisa is Founder of the Turbocharge Hub, which provides frameworks, tools and training to business leaders who want to be future-ready and fast-track implementation of change initiatives.