How can you learn about customer retention as a new hire?

In my experience, retention of clients is key for all organizations and certainly an important task for new hires. First, one must know why he or she is in the position, such as, is the client relationship at risk? Second, what was the client experience while utilizing the services provided by your company? How is it measured? Does it make sense? Be inquisitive, be interested, and ask the right questions to learn about the client. Most importantly, are you addressing your clients requirements? Are you able to be their trusted advisor? Lastly, be aware of what your competition is offering. With this basic information, you can formulate your retention strategy. Make changes to your approach based on solution versus service.

Someone once told me, you're only new once. Meaning, any client is only new that one first time before they purchase the product or service. As a new hire (whether you are in a hunter role or retention role), it's important to understand the value of first impressions and the value of the brand you are selling, and I don't mean the product or company, I mean (you). You are the brand and what you say, do, act, will determine how far the relationship with the client goes. What is your brand? and what does it say about you?

As a new hire, there are several ways you can learn about customer retention: Training and onboarding. Shadowing and observing experienced colleagues. Attend meetings and team discussions. Seek feedback and guidance from mentors. Read industry resources and case studies. Analyze customer feedback and data. Attend conferences and webinars. Collaborate with cross-functional teams: Customer retention often involves collaboration across departments, such as sales, marketing, customer support, and product development. Remember, customer retention is a continuous learning process. As a new hire, be curious, proactive, and open to learning from various sources within your organization and the industry as a whole.

One thing I have found helpful is when customers encounter issues or challenges, showing empathy during problem-solving can turn a potentially negative experience into a positive one. Customers appreciate knowing that their concerns are acknowledged and being addressed with genuine care.

Customer retention is an ongoing process, so it's important to continuously seek learning opportunities by researching best practices, staying informed on the latest industry and market trends, and connecting with an experienced colleague who can provide insight. In my experience, successful customer retention involves proactive communication and a deep understanding of client needs. Checking in regularly, addressing concerns promptly, providing tailored solutions and offering value-added services to build trust and long-term partnerships. And most importantly always asking for client feedback to help identify areas for improvement. Prioritizing customer satisfaction and delivering excellence at every touchpoint cultivates loyal customers.

Talking to your front line employees is crucial when it comes to learning about customer retention. They have direct interaction with customers on a daily basis and can provide valuable insights and feedback. They are familiar with the challenges and opportunities that arise in customer interactions and can share their experiences and observations. By engaging with your front line employees, you can gain a deeper understanding of customer needs, preferences, and pain points. Their input can help you identify areas for improvement and develop strategies to enhance customer retention. Additionally, by involving them in the process, you can foster a sense of ownership and empowerment among your front line employees.

Best way to gain insights is to learn from those who are already doing the task, they have examples of actual scenarios where they had overcome various challenges and dealt with difficult customers. This would help us to curate the very basic objection handling pitches to retain clients.

The best experts to talk to, to understand the voice of customer (voc) is the customer success/support team. These are teams on the frontline, directly engaging and interacting with customers. An understanding of the health of your services is best powered by an analytical distillation of your voc. Health of services, at the end of any day, powers customer retention more than anything else. Understand the correlation between customer retention and voc.

Never be too proud to ask questions. Regardless of how long you've been in your current position, there is always something new to learn. New hires can dramatically shorten the learning curve in customer retention by simply asking questions. This is the quickest way to gain useful and tangible tips to utilize in your approach to your new role.

Always learn from people who are more successful than you. They don't have to have been there longer. In fact listening to some people who have been there many years may harm your progress. Go for quality and listen to the most successful colleagues. That's why you have 2 ears and 1 mouth

In my experience investing your time to truly understand what is important to your customer is key. Use the resources at your fingertips and invest your time. This knowledge will be valuable during your initial engagements.

Directly asking your customers about their wants and needs is crucial for understanding their preferences and expectations. You can gather this information through surveys, focus groups, feedback forms, customer interviews, and social media listening. Surveys allow you to collect feedback and specific insights, while focus groups facilitate in-depth discussions. Feedback forms on various platforms help gather direct feedback, and one-on-one customer interviews provide valuable qualitative insights. Additionally, monitoring social media platforms allows you to identify customer wants and needs expressed online. By utilizing these methods, you can tailor your products, services, and communication to effectively meet customer needs.

Putting our self into the customer shoes will enable us to understand the exact feelings customer goes through. Probe and understand the needs.

Remain close to your customers. Have a keen understanding of what their needs/goals are and go above and beyond to exceed their expectations! Make it easy and pleasant to do business with you.

Talk to your customers, go and visit them. Ask them about them. Listen and take note. Care about them and act on it. You only get to know your customers by getting in front of them and asking them open questions.

Take the customer concerns and use those to move forward with change. Listen to employees, test methods and be there to support your team. There will likely be some resistance, that's the human response to change. So while you listen to concerns, know how to provide feedback about the results.

Experiment and test and try new things however always learn from your mistakes. Most importantly, making mistakes should be welcomed. If not, how are you ever going to learn from them, especially if you're inexperienced?

In my experience it would be really beneficial to go through some articles over the web regarding the metrics which are commonly used and understanding the same. Once you understand the metrics it gives a clear view on what should we measure for the type of campaign.

The best tool I've found for customer retention is using the complaints. Complaints are a tool, they're a portal into the customers perspective. Instead of viewing complaints as a one time fix, utilize the information given to you and apply it to the broad picture. A complaint by one is likely felt by many. It's yours to leverage, so leverage it and make your company better for your customers.

Know your figures, always. Learn customer KPIs and their goals so you can achieve together. This helps customer retention as you both win

Remember that not all customers are created equal. Every customer has a story to tell. Find out what is important to them and why they became your customer in the first place. For one customer, the answer my be that your quality was unmatched by the competition, but another customer may say that they didn't care about the quality; they made their decision strictly based on a referral. This information matters! Because if you want to keep that client forever, and have them refer their friends, you need to understand that catering to them specifically is what will help you to retain their business. Do not try to make every customer the same. Instead, embrace their differences and their stories, and thank them for trusting you to help.

Every days a learning day and every customer is different. Learn something new every day and treat ever customer different according to their wants, needs and personalities. Treat the customer according to their wants and match as best you can to your organizations requirements. Win win. Don't give every customer the same pitch for example. Adapting to each customer is most important

Understand that reactivation of a churned customer is equally as important as retention of an existing customer. Reactivation is differently nuanced as compared to retention, but the thought process needs to be the same. Understand and deliver the needs of your customer and keep building so that they keep coming back for more.

Failure management is the key to retention you need to keep identifying the reasons why your customers are leaving. Work backwards and identify the process failure that led to their exit. Once you have done the root cause analysis keep correcting the process and that's it. Your retention will improve over a period of time.

New hires should be acquainted with customer segmentation, recognizing different customer groups with distinct needs. Learning about feedback analysis, implementing personalized strategies, and understanding the overall customer journey contribute to a comprehensive understanding of customer retention. How has the sentiment of the customers been so far?

Looking after and increasing your market share with existing customers is far easier to do than new customers. Especially look for existing customers that, for whatever reason, have objections. If you can listen to them, act on it and make them feel comfortable that's when both customer and you can move forward in a productive and valued way. Best customer retention is when you overcome objections and move forward together

Show the customers and the employees the power of their voice. Everyone can better a company and the people customers interact most with, is where the most change can be learned.