What comes around goes around; this is true for everything, even customers! Losing some of your customers is inevitable, but if customers are constantly turning their backs on you, it’s time to take a stand and make an effort to turn things around.
Since it has been proven that the success of any eCommerce brand lies in its ability to obtain loyal customers and keep churn rates low, let’s take a deep dive into some promising tactics to reduce customer churn rate and retain your existing customers.
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The customer churn rate is the number of customers that stop purchasing from your eCommerce store over a specific period of time. The lower your customer churn rate, the higher your retention rates are. Accordingly, your main goal of using this metric is to reduce the rate and ensure your customers are satisfied.
Before we get into more details about reducing customer churn rate, you first have to learn how you can calculate it.
To calculate your customer churn rate, you need two simple steps:
Basically, the customer churn rate formula= (total number of customers lost in a period of time / total number of customers at the start of the same period) x 100.
It is also worth noting that this is the simplest form, and as your company grows and acquires more customers, you will need more complex formulas to get the most accurate number.
The real question is, how important is the customer churn rate and is it worth spending money, time, and effort trying to reduce it? This metric is essential for any eCommerce business because it can help you understand consumer patterns and learn the overall satisfaction of your customers. Let's take a quick glance at some facts and numbers so you can determine that for yourself!
By now, you must have realized the importance of customer churn rate, so let’s take a deep dive into some of the best methods to reduce customer churn rate for eCommerce brands.
The first thing you need to do is learn why you are losing customers in the first place. By doing that, you will get a deep understanding of your consumers' behavior and try to alter it. You can collect data by calling your customers, sending them emails, or surveys. This is also an essential step in calculating your net promoter score (NPS).
Although your main goal should be to retain your customer base, let’s be serious this is hardly ever the case. So you should be focusing more on loyal customers that tend to spend a lot and shop constantly from your eCommerce business.
With more than 65% of customers abandoning brands because they simply don’t think they care about them, customer engagement is extremely vital for reducing churn rate. With that in mind, try to engage with your customers through different channels and occasionally show appreciation by offering special deals or loyalty programs.
No one leaves a company that gives them a reason to stay, and there is no better reason than freebies or exclusive deals. Incentivize customers that you are about to lose to stay on board by giving them special offers on things they need or like. You can learn that by analyzing their previous orders and their abandoned carts (if they have any).
Constantly ask for customer feedback even when everything is on the right track, this will help you find problems before they appear and reduce customer churn rate. As previously mentioned, you can get customer feedback through phone calls, surveys, or emails.
Through the same NPS surveys, you can identify customers you are about to lose and start giving them beneficial reasons to stay. This could be in the form of gifts, special deals, or just some personalized emails that shows them your company actually cares.
By having a clear onboarding process for your customers from the very beginning, you drastically decrease the chance of obtaining customers with the wrong expectations. This will result in your customers being well aware of what your eCommerce brand is offering, and accordingly, your customer churn rate won’t be high.
People like to feel they belong to a tight-knit community, even if it’s with strangers online. With that in mind, you should work on building a community out of your customer base by keeping them engaged with your eCommerce brand and other customers on your website and social media accounts.
To get high customer satisfaction rates, you should have the right customers from the beginning. It’s easy to throw some money on a marketing campaign and increase your customer base, but the real challenge is retaining those customers. Therefore you should use targeted campaigns to get the right consumers for your eCommerce brand. In other words, get customers who need you, and they will stay for the long haul.
You can lose a customer in a few seconds if you are not there when they need your help. So by having live chat support and preferably one that is available 24/7, your customers will have a way of letting you know their problems and getting them fixed at any time.
Pay attention to any complaint you can get, no matter how small or even inaccurate you think it is. Only one negative experience can make you lose a customer, and bad word of mouth travels way faster than a good one. No matter how insignificant a customer’s complaint might be, always be apologetic, and you can even go the extra mile and offer them a discount.
Re-engaging old customers may not be a direct way to reduce customer churn rate, but surely it will still affect your overall performance. You can re-engage them by sending push messages or emails.
Most eCommerce companies focus all their marketing campaigns on customer acquisition, and they ignore existing customers. However, by showing your existing customers the maximum value they can get out of your products, you can increase the average order value and average basket size. Needless to say, this will also help you reduce customer churn rate and increase revenues.
Always ensure that you are providing your customers with something they can’t get from your direct competitors. In simple terms, give them additional value to get their ultimate loyalty.
Through research and data analysis, you should be able to determine the best way of communicating and engaging your customers. For instance, if you are a B2B company, your tone of voice should be professional. On the other hand, if you are a B2C company, you have to be upbeat and friendly.
Always encourage your customers to take long-term solutions instead of short-term ones. For example, if you are providing a subscription-based service, instead of pushing monthly subscriptions, you can encourage them to go for the annual ones by making them a more cost-efficient option.
Like every eCommerce company, your website and app are the most important tools for your business. Therefore they have to be easy for everyone to use and navigate. This doesn’t only help in reducing customer churn rate, it’s also been proven that a good UI/UX design helps in increasing customer satisfaction, conversion, and revenues.
This may seem insignificant to reducing customer churn, but the truth is personalization is essential these days in keeping customers around for long periods. You can never get the same customer engagement or loyalty from mass emails.
Surely you have something that makes you stand out from the competition, so you should always remind your existing customers of those unique selling points and the value your eCommerce brand is offering them.
Sometimes consumers need some persuasion to stay, therefore you should have your best people deal with any cancellation. This technique is primarily for B2B eCommerce businesses, as it could be a little hard to do that with consumers.
All in all, the most important thing for reducing customer churn rate is to ensure your customers are always happy with your products and services. A happy customer is a retained customer that is unlikely to turn their back on you!
Final Thoughts
Any successful eCommerce business should focus its efforts to reduce customer churn rate and ensure high levels of customer satisfaction. However, most retention methods are easier said than done, but eCommerce marketing operating systems like ConvertedIn can give you a helping hand in reducing customer churn rates and always keeping your customers happy! Book a demo now and let our experts help you out!