Almost 25 years ago, my wife and I were in the market for a new car. We needed a bigger vehicle for our growing family and wanted an easy, painless experience. A friend of ours recommended a broker, so we gave him all the details of what we wanted, even down to the color, make, and model. As promised, the broker called us back a few days later and said he could drop ship our Dodge Durango to a nearby dealer.
However, when my wife went to pick up the car, it was Barney-the-dinosaur purple, and not the color we had specified. Despite this, we eventually sorted it out and were able to drive away with the car.
This story highlights a key element in customer retention - often, customers are either won or lost not at the point of renewal, but during the delivery and adoption phases.
In B2B marketing, there can be various stakeholders involved across the different stages of the buyer’s journey. Sometimes, you will only find end-users during the delivery and adoption phases and they didn’t necessarily have a seat at the table in the initial stages of the process. Because of this, brands must understand the expectations of these new stakeholders, listen to the users’ needs and help them improve in their roles. This way, they can tailor delivery and help increase adoption across the customer's organisation.
Providing a great customer experience must begin long before a purchase is made, but the experience that occurs once a prospect becomes a customer is crucial to building loyalty. If brands stumble out of the gate in the delivery and service of their product or service, they will have a hard time trying to win back their customers’ goodwill.
Maximising customer lifetime value (CLV) should be a priority for organisations looking to grow. To improve CLV, many organisations immediately implement upsell and cross-selling strategies. However, if done too early in the journey, it can reinforce a bad experience. If you want to win the opportunity to expand your customer relationship and maximise CLV, understand that activating your customers through delivery and adoption is key. When done correctly, it continues the thread of sterling experience and further drives customer loyalty, making it more likely that your customer will want to explore your other products and solutions.
It is important for organisations to invest their marketing budget wisely in order to understand the critical path that needs to be taken to win the game of retention and increase their chances for organisational growth. Customer retention is an ongoing process, and providing a great customer experience throughout the journey will help brands to achieve their goals.
Originally reported by Martech: https://martech.org/where-b2b-brands-win-and-lose-on-customer-retention/
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