Did you know? Research from Bain and Company has found that a 5% increase in customer retention, has more than 25% increase in profit!

It often happens, when in order to get leads, you have drawn visitors to your website, networked well, ramped up your social media presence, and even converted some of the leads into customers. But unfortunately, your customers unsubscribe or cancel their accounts soon after! And you have to do all the hard work again and restart from scratch. Heart-breaking, but happens to all of us.

Unfortunately, your competitors are a step ahead and have swiped your hard-earned customers right under your nose. But the truth is that, with the fierce cut-throat competition, customers these days are prone to change their minds, which is why you need every tool available to retain your customers. And that brings Salesforce into the picture. While most businesses focus on using Salesforce for closing leads, you need to know that this conversion process costs money and a lot of it. In fact, customer acquisition is 5 – 25x more expensive, in contrast to customer retention. This is why you need to hang on to the good customers that you’ve earned already.

Yes, multiple factors determine the success or failure of a business, but the most important remains their number of customers or clients. This is why every aspect of a business strives to bring in new consumers to increase profits. But while pursuing new clientele, they don’t forget to realize the importance of retaining the clients they already have. Thus, a lot of businesses view consumer retention as an even bigger priority than new business. Data has shown that an existing client spends an average of 31% more than a new one. Even the probability of converting an existing client is much higher as compared to a new one — 60-70% versus a mere 5-20%!

Also Read: Guide to Salesforce Testing: Process & Benefits 

How do businesses measure customer retention?

You can use the following simple formula to calculate your customer retention rate (CRR) involving the customers you have at the start (S), at the end (E), and customers acquired during the period you’re measuring (N).

The formula is:

CRR = ((E-N)/S) x 100

It goes without saying that businesses should aim for as high a retention rate as possible. Usually, most companies aim to hit above 85%.

How can Salesforce help you improve your Customer Retention?

Salesforce is your one-stop solution, offering a complete package of all the features you need to retain your customers by improving their journey with the brand, at every touchpoint.

Let’s get into how.

1. Centralized Database

Leverage Salesforce’s data centralization to make accessing and decision making, hassle-free and swift. With all the data merged in a single location, you can eliminate the worries of data inaccuracy and verification. All the effort that would have otherwise gone into data management, can now easily be turned towards improving your customers’ user experience.

2. Integrated Software

Take advantage of a 360-degree view of each of your customers, by seamlessly integrating Salesforce with applications like Gmail, Dropbox, Mail Chimp, etc. Salesforce has also united the marketing and sales departments in a much better way now, so anyone can access relevant data belonging to different departments, such as purchase history, time spent on the website, and so on. This also helps customer queries to be addressed more quickly and efficiently than before.

3. The Mobile Experience – Apps

The importance of the mobile experience to a brand these days is immense, with the number of people spending time on apps and purchasing items on mobile devices growing every year. In fact, adults in the United States spend an average of 2 hours and 41 minutes every day on mobile apps! Apps present a more personal avenue for users to engage with your brand, which translates into a better opportunity for you.

And Salesforce goes beyond just helping you build portal apps. With Salesforce, you can also manage buyer journeys across marketing, sales, commerce, client service, and more. And with the help of AI-driven tools, you can use available data more effectively to make the most of your opportunities. The ROI of building apps with Salesforce is impressively high, just sign up for a free demo of Journey Builder, and find out how you too can boost your retention rates.

4. Customized Content

Any customer would appreciate receiving a mail mentioning their name and requesting feedback or offering assistance with the product they just bought. This kind of personalization gives customers the acknowledgment and recognition required to build brand value and trust. This is one of the top reasons companies store customer data. It also helps with marketing campaigns and better targeting. With Salesforce, you can leverage ‘Pardot’ to track user behavior based on their interactions with your website, for a smoother and better-tailored user experience.

5. Leverage AI-Driven Insights & Reports

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are helpful to solve problems, collect data and stitch together relevant information to create client insights. AI can also be used for audience segmentation and targeting, helping companies know which clients are the most valuable, i.e. are more likely to return or spend more and where they can be found. This data can then be leveraged to reach out to those specific clients in a more personal and effective manner, to send the right offers, at the right time, through the right channel.

With the help of AI-driven insights, you are also enabled to solve problems even before they happen! And with the AI-powered case management tools, your service representatives now have immediate access to relevant data, along with the ability to transfer issues to the best-suited people, so they can be taken care of seamlessly, as soon as they arise.

6. Analytics Cloud For Loopholes

No matter how hard we try, unsubscribing customers happen and this disheartening fact leaves us confused and clueless. But no more so with the Salesforce Analytics Cloud coming to our rescue. The Analytics Cloud helps you with deeper insights into your customers’ behavior, so you can understand the reasons for their decreased productivity or disengagement. This turns your previous worries into a whole new opportunity to figure out what needs to be amended and how.

7. Social Media Engagement

Connecting with your customers on social media gives your engagement a human touch. With Salesforce, you can leverage tools in Salesforce Social Customer Service, and provide more value to your customers. The social media platforms can be further used to study user behavior based on what they ‘like’ and ‘follow’. You can also keep them posted about the latest offerings of your business, such as offers, discounts, sales, latest launches, and so on.

8. Customer Feedback And Reviews

Customer feedback is the best way to get to know your customers’ minds in order to become better and keep growing. And this can be achieved through Salesforce Surveys. All you need to do is put a survey on the thank you page, or send one through social media or e-mail, and your customers can answer questions about your brand, product, or service and let you know how you are meeting their expectations. The data collected can be used to prepare reports or for keeping the customers updated, helping you as well as them. Even payment reminders, or changes due to uncertainties, etc., can be conveyed, saving your customers from unpleasant experiences and protecting you from the resulting loss of brand value. It also helps your customers feel a better and deeper connection with your brand.

9. Customer Service Tools

Salesforce has a bunch of amazing tools for facilitating customer service. They can be taken advantage of, for easy access to customer grievances, queries, and requests, from across departments. The availability of all the information in one place helps teams to utilize it to the maximum, for solving customer issues as well as upselling products and/or services.

Why you should choose AppShark for your Salesforce project requirements?

Salesforce can be confusing and difficult to implement and use to the best of its capabilities. This is why choosing the ideal partner with the right experience should be of utmost priority for your organization. Let us implement and customize it for you.

We are AppShark– a Gold Certified Salesforce Partner, specializing in the implementation, integration, and customization of Salesforce solutions. With more than 10 years of experience and 100 plus certified Salesforce experts, we give clients the advantage to engage on flexible models as per their requirements. From giving end-to-end Managed Services, to providing hard-to-find resources on hourly and block of hours basis, AppShark can help reduce the go-to time of Salesforce projects and maximize their efficiency, no matter how complex they are.

Feel free to contact us here, or mail us at sales@appshark.com