How To Use Emotional Intelligence To Retain Customers
Successful businesses thrive on repeat patronage. The best way to guarantee consistent growth is keeping your existing customer base whilst scouting for new ones. Emotional intelligence then helps to identify and better understand what attracted your customers to you in the first place so that you can continue recreating such experiences.
It one thing to acquire customers, it’s another thing to retain them. After you have successfully recruited prospects into your sales funnel, which is from the point of awareness to the point of taking action – you need to develop ingenious strategies to ensure that they don’t leave that desired location.
That said, retaining customers still requires some work but most business people and organizations underestimate this. There are always rival brands that are competing for your customer’s attention and offering similar value, so the quest to keep customers loyal to your brand is an eternal one. The goal of every business to perpetuate and maximize the lifetime value of each customer which is the total value that a customer brings to an organization over the course of their business relationship. Understanding and managing the emotions of customers to ensure continuous patronage then becomes a much sought-after skill.
Available data says “acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer. Increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits from 25-95%. The success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60-70%, while the success rate of selling to a new customer is 5-20%.” (Outbound Engine, 2021)
- Create A Premium User Experience
For most customers, if something is not broken – there is no use fixing it. When customers constantly have top notch user experience, it is by itself a dissuasion from dumping that organization’s product or services for another’s. Human being generally are afraid of the unknown, we are innately risk-averse and we will instinctively choose safety over adventure. The comfort of the familiar is why people hardly change and when they get a similitude of value, it further entrenches their use of a product or service. Organization should make the total interaction of a customer enjoyable from end to end. Beyond offering desirable value, organizations should make customers happy to part with their money. When customer see that you offer superior value, it will be difficult for them to leave.
Apple understands this strategy, their flagship product, the iPhone is a deluxe product. It runs on the IOS operating software and offers perks and features that other phone manufacturers are unable to offer. The manufacturers of phones that run on the Android operating software have tried to ingenious designs, tried to imitate the functions and style of Apple products but have failed to sway hard core users. IOS users usually go for cheaper or older versions of an IOS phone over switching to Android.
- Adopt Loyalty Programmes
Don’t take the continued patronage of your customers for granted. Ensure than their loyalty is more by design than by default. Loyalty programmes are basically a set of incentives that encourage repeat use or purchase; they come in form of discounts, rewards, free shipping, member-only access, etc. Customers are human beings, like anyone else they are self-seeking and when their enlightened self-interest is being advanced, they will continue to perpetuate actions that yield such benefits. Emotional intelligence taps into the innate motivation of people to get them to engage in certain actions that produce desired actions. The affiliate system is also effective in retaining customers because it rewards them for introducing new customers – the key here is that you have to continue being a customer first before enjoying the perks of introducing others.
Emirates Airlines have a loyalty programme known as Emirates Skywards, the big idea is to offer juicy perks to customers who fly frequently. Some of these perks for high mileage customers range from discounts on selected flights, complementary stay at partner hotels, ticket upgrades (e.g. from economy class to business class), priority luggage delivery, lounge access, etc. These exclusive deals make it very unattractive for their existing customers to switch brands.
- Offer Customized Services
One of the benefits of proper book-keeping is that you can see the customer spend on your products and services, those are very frequent, those that have patronized you for the longest time etc. By using the data, you can better personalize the services you offer to different customers. Data will show the purchasing patterns and consumption habits of customers, hence making it possible to interact with clients in more specific terms. This type of communication shows that you see the client more as a person than a statistic in your business model. One of the greatest emotional needs of human being is the need to be recognized and treated as important. So by identifying and appropriately classifying customer, you touch that cord which is important to driving retention.
Luxury fashion stores understand this very well, they are prompt in identifying the big spenders who splurge frequently. Sometimes such customers in high-end stores get customized shopping cards, customize merch, complimentary wine and sometimes free delivery. Same thing applies with certain high-end bars and restaurants, some go as far as permanently reserving tables for their elite customers, making special announcements of their arrival/presence or even special car parking privileges.
- Active Use Of Feedback
Customers always have opinions about how better they can be served, ignore such at your own peril. By integrating the feedback of your customers, you further entrench a sense of belonging and ownership – they feel like they have a say. That’s a powerful feeling or emotion that people find hard to forgo, the idea of being at the centre of an organization’s plan is priceless. Organization that seek to retain customers always give their customers a voice; whether it’s a feedback trough on a website and social media platforms to rate their products or service, aggregating consensus through surveys, organizing interactive sessions or media parleys, advertising etc. Whether or not every feedback is integrated into the production process, the very act of engaging customers shows a regard for them – an act usually rewarded by loyalty from the customer.
Ride-hailing services have changed the game forever with real-time collection of feedback. Organizations like Uber and Bolt have integrated into their apps a rating system that allows user to rate the driving experiences they have. This not only gives the company a sense of how well customers are integrating with their product, it helps curb the excesses of drivers whilst making the customer more powerful because their ratings influence the algorithms for ranking drivers. It would be very difficult to leave that system of feedback to use the services of regular taxis with little or no accountability.
- Encouraging Long-Term Subscriptions
Sometimes, customers leave because it’s easy to do so and not because they really want to leave. By incentivizing long-term subscriptions, an organization can more easily retain customers because as rational buyers, they would want to wait out their use of a product or service that they have already paid for. Whilst human beings are to a some extent logical and guided by reason, we can also be erratic in our consumption behaviour. This means that an organization can do everything right to please a customer and yet that customer will leave for a competing brand that doesn’t even offer the same level of value. This can be solved by automating long term subscriptions, so that the customer are further engaged for retention.
Netflix runs on subscriptions, many people are compelled to watch movies on the platform simply because they have already paid for it. In some cases, an arrangement is made for payments to be deducted from source. Facebook Ads uses the same playbook, prospective advertisers are required to make payments into their accounts ever before they run ads, hence a necessary compulsion to exhaust the funds on their service. DSTV also gives incentives for customers that make early payments such as temporary upgrade of bouquet.
- Create/Offer Most Sought-After Products
This is very straight-forward, when you offer an exclusive product or a product that is most cost-effective for customers, they will naturally stick to your organization. This is usually an innovative product that meets certain widespread demand. Customers are itinerant and nomadic; always looking for the best value for money – when they are offered products that are superior to others, they will camp there. When laptops and desktops entered the market, the quickly displaced typewriters because it offered more convenience, efficiency and at market-friendly rates. So long as an organization is continuously innovating and re-inventing itself, it will not only attract new clients – it will retain them.