Bain and Company released a popular paper at the turn of the millennium that claimed boosting customer retention by 5% could boost profits by between 25% and 95%.
Customer churn is a particular problem in technology businesses especially when the customer is at an early stage in their engagement with the business. Localytics research suggests that mobile app retention was 20% after 90 days (see below). Granted, churn may be particularly prevalent in the app world, but many other businesses experience similar problems; 55% of SaaS businesses rate churn as their most important metric.
CRM requirements
There are many factors to consider when reducing churn:
- Having a good product that people want
- Good onboarding
- Targeting the right users
- Customer service
Good customer service is a key element to retaining clients, especially when the clients are new to a business. Customer service can include solving a multitude of customer issues and traditionally focuses on dealing with problems. Let’s take a look at how a CRM can help facilitate great customer service.
Ticketing
Central to customer service success is an efficient ticketing system that allows internal agents to assimilate a large number of customer service requests and disseminate them into a workflow. A good system will allow for prioritization and allocation to the most appropriate person.
CRM integrations
The customer service ticketing system should pull information from other parts of the CRM to maximize efficiency. If an agent can quickly and easily view information about the customer from the CRM, it can provide vital context for dealing with the query. It may, for example, give context on what product configuration the customer is using or how long they’ve been a customer.
Ease of access
The user experience for the customer should be seamless across different platforms and should avoid user frustration. Making the process of raising a ticket easy for the customer is important. To further help the customer there may be help articles and other resources the customer can use to solve the problem.
Chat
If resources allow, some customer service teams can respond to queries using a chat function, which in the right circumstances can be a great tool. Firstly, it allows the customer to get instant access to someone, relieving frustrations. Secondly, agents can often deal with multiple chat windows at one time, speeding up the efficiency. Without the right resources, this can become overwhelming, so it needs to be set up correctly.
Auto translate
Many modern global CRM providers offer translation so a customer service team can deal with queries from all over the world. This is perfect for international e-commerce and SaaS businesses that sell globally.
Customer service is often overlooked by businesses, with sales and marketing often taking precedence. Customer services are less glamorous, but for many businesses, are more important. The tips in the article should guide you towards making sure that you implement a CRM that effectively supports your customer service activities.
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