Customer Retention Strategy and Implementation

Strategy and implementation is all about getting out and making changes to your business to increase your Return on Customer Investment (ROCI).

Once you have a measurement system (so you can measure your progress) and management processes (so you can implement your ideas) you actually have to make changes to your business. Those changes generally fall into two categories:

• Increase Per Customer Profitability
• Increase Customer Retention

Some of the programmes that we have implemented for each camp are outlined below but first you should know that we practice what we strategize!

Unlike many organizations we not only help you to uncover the right customer value strategy we get down into the trenches and help you make it a reality.

Increase Per Customer Profitability

So now you know which are your most profitable customers and what drives both their revenue and cost behaviours its time to get on and implement some programmes to increase profitability. Examples of the types of programmes we implement include:

• Product and Service Bundling

  It sounds so simple - combine some products and give away a discount to customers for taking up the combined products. The reality is that many organisations have ended up spending far more money on fixing there bundling attempt than actually making any money from it.

  Bundling can be a very profitable strategy for organisations. However, there are many implementation issues and challenges that need to be considered that go far beyond the process and systems issues that you will face.

  For example, bundle qualifications, benefits and linkages, rules of engagement for new customers versus existing customers, etc.

• Cross-Sell/Up-sell programs

  In order to deliver tactical initiatives that contribute to delivering strategy, all these programs need to be developed and delivered according to a combined impact on the customers relationship and ultimately customer value to you.

  However, the reality is that these are usually based on tactical decisions that result in much money wasted with minimal results that cannot be directly linked to improving your profits.

One of the simplest ways of increasing customer profitability is to increase customer retention. Increasing customer retention by just one or two percent can have a dramatic impact on the overall profitability of your customers base.

• High Value Customer Retention

  Programmes to ensure that you can identify and retain your most valuable customers

• Save/Winback Programmes

  Save and Winback programmes prevent you from losing customers who are stepping away from your organisation. This is more expensive than retaining customers but less expensing the finding new ones.

• Customer Satisfaction

  How oh how do you justify investing in increased customer satisfaction. Its so soft and hard to relate to profit. We have several approaches that can be used to develop hard business cases for investment in customer satisfaction.

• Loyalty Driver Identification and improvement

  Why do customers stay and why do they leave? Once you know why they stay you can create programmes to maintain and enhance customer's loyalty always remembering that investments must have an appropriate ROCI.