How can you use stakeholder communication to improve customer retention in a crisis?

Let's face it, if you are only building relationships with key stakeholders after a crisis has emerged, you are playing catch-up. This happens from time-to-time as contacts change within your customers, but you should constantly be ensuring that you have 3x3 contacts (3 contacts at 3 different levels) at all times with your accounts. Otherwise, you won't have credibility and relationship to leverage during a crisis and you will be evaluated only on your response to that situation.

Be transparent, tailor messages to customer needs, provide solutions, and highlight safety measures. Empower employees with training, collect feedback, and reinforce brand values. This approach fosters trust and loyalty, helping your business weather the storm successfully.

During a crisis, effective communication with stakeholders is crucial for customer retention. Stakeholders should provide timely updates and keep customers informed of any changes or disruptions. Gathering feedback from customers and addressing their concerns can build trust and loyalty. In summary, good stakeholder communication is essential for maintaining customer retention during a crisis.

To improve customer retention in a crisis, effective stakeholder communication is crucial. Businesses can leverage stakeholder communication by being transparent, listening to feedback, providing timely updates, and offering support. By implementing these strategies, businesses can build stronger customer relationships, improve retention rates, and emerge from the crisis in a position of strength.

In a crisis, speed of communication is critical. Comms plans should ensure that the stakeholders are receiving the updates needed, when they need them. If information isn't available, and update needs to inform the stakeholders what is or isn't known at that time, and when the next update will occur.

For me it's very simple. My clients and stakeholders are all in one place (CRM). This includes their name, department, email, phone and most importantly who and what they support. Organize your stakeholders so you know who the go to person is in any given situation. My team also knows who to contact, when and why. Everyone in an organization needs to have a clear path to stakeholders.

In a crisis, do your best to aggregate comms into as few channels as possible. It is likely that not all stakeholders (i.e. executives) will be needed in the working sessions focused on tactical resolution, but they will need to be kept informed along the way. Assign an owner to making sure that all stakeholders are informed after each interaction to avoid miscommunications and frustration.

CRM. Make notes on how each stakeholder prefers to be contacted. Some people prefer emails. Some prefer phone calls. Always note in your CRM which channel they want you to reach them through. Always make notes on who to contact if AB or C occur.

Effective communication in outsourcing isn't just about channels; it's about creating personal bonds. A flat-culture approach and dedicated points of contact ensure swift problem-solving and proactive support, fostering strong client-developer relationships. It's a recipe for success in technical outsourcing.

Don't leave it until the crisis to talk/meet/discuss Cannot be clearer than that. So find your prospective helpers and the people who have a common need to avoid or mitigate the impact of your - and/or their - potential 'crisis'.

Trust with my customers is built upon agreed upon goals, and my delivery. Stakeholders always know when and how they can get a hold of me, if they need to. If I'm not available, I set the expectation with all stakeholders of how long they should expect for me to reply. And when I get back to them within that timeframe, trust is built.

Our bi-weekly stakeholder meetings consist of a roundtable discussion. In our company, communication is mainly through email, text and video calls. Our stakeholders have an opportunity to ask questions and make contributive suggestions. The key here is not to just talk about it. Someone has to make make notes, and place any new processes into our company policies. Clear communication between stakeholders is important if you want your customers to experience fast and efficient service.