Facing retention problems?

This may seem obvious:

Retention is about future value. For both your company and your customer.

For you, it means customer lifetime value continues to accrue. This is ROI across the board.

For your customer, it needs to mean this: that the future value of staying with you is greater than the future value of being with your competitor. 

The problem is, future value isn’t always very motivating (remember the marshmallow experiment?). So you need to find out what value will inspire your customer to stay.

What emotions do your customers need to feel?

Companies that make complex products know their own products so well that they suffer from the “Curse of Knowledge”, a cognitive bias that makes them underestimate the effort it takes to understand their product and appreciate its rational superiority. They overlook the role that emotion plays in decision-making, and neglect mirroring that emotion in their communications and experiences.

How soon and how often do your customers need to feel the value?

Emotions fade. Sometimes this is helpful (“Time heals all wounds…”) and sometimes it’s not (“Falling out of love”). Your customers need brand interactions that refresh their memories and bring value on a more regular basis. Service innovation is a valuable approach - that’s how Nike evolved from merely making shoes to providing training programs.

When is retention most at risk?

It’s usually not hard to see when your customers are actually leaving. But it can be harder to see when the relationship actually weakened. Sometimes it’s as early as the onboarding process (or the lack of a good one) - we’ve seen this with our clients. Fixing retention is often an early-prevention game. Just as you can’t win a soccer game with only a great goalie, you can’t fix retention by only investing in last-minute interventions. Retention is the result of an investment in the circular customer experience, from the emotional brand connection, to the constant product and service value, to an inspiring vision of the future.

We can help you explore your opportunities. Let’s discuss.