Not only is it important to gain customers, but you need to retain them too. Strong customer retention proves that your customers are satisfied with your brand and/or products. Plus, it saves money in the long run. Studies show that loyal customers spend more, meaning it’s cheaper to retain a current customer than attract a new one.
To help founders learn more about how they can effectively retain customers, we’ve collated a selection of educational resources – including books, articles, reports and more.
Books:
- The Customer Rules: The 39 Essential Rules for Delivering Sensational Service by Lee Cockerell – Former Executive Vice President of Operations for the Walt Disney World Resort, Lee Cockerell shares his tips for delivering exceptional customer service.
- The Effortless Experience: Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty by Matthew Dixon, Nick Toman, and Rick DeLisi – This book offers insights into how companies can improve their customer service by implementing changes to reduce customer effort.
- Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers by Jay Baer – Jay Baer explores the importance of addressing customer complaints and how it can lead to increased loyalty.
- Customer Success: How Innovative Companies Are Reducing Churn and Growing Recurring Revenue by Nick Mehta, Dan Steinman, and Lincoln Murphy – This book explores the concept of customer success, and how it can both reduce customer churn and increase revenue for businesses.
Articles and guides:
- The Future of Customer Service: 5 Emerging Trends To Watch by Gartner – This guide by Gartner highlights five trends that will push service and support functions, so that companies can build a more value-driven customer service function. The guide includes research based on conversations with customer service and support leaders, and experts throughout Gartner, and leverages data from numerous Gartner surveys.
- Are You Undervaluing Your Customers? by Harvard Business Review – This Harvard Business Review article explores the importance of prioritising your business around customer needs, rather than focusing on cost-cutting measures that can hurt your relationship with them.
- Maintaining Customer Loyalty in the Face of Inflation by Harvard Business Review – Cutting business costs while still focusing on the consumer can be a difficult balancing act, especially in economic uncertainty. This Harvard Business Review article explores five strategies for companies to maintain consumer trust during these periods.
- The 5 Steps You Need To Take To Improve Customer Retention And Boost Your Profits by Forbes – Offering practical tips for businesses looking to improve their customer retention, this article provides actionable strategies to help improve customer loyalty and trust.
- Build an Effective, Scalable CX Program to Retain More Customers and Drive Brand Loyalty by Wootric – In this guide, Wootric underlines the importance of implementing a scalable customer experience (CX) program. Gain valuable insights that show how to build a CX-First Culture, take CX to the next level, and further use CX as a competitive advantage.
Reports:
- 2024 Global Consumer Trends Report by Qualtrics – Based on responses from more than 28,000 consumers across 26 countries, Qualtrics’ 4th annual Consumer Trends Report shows how valuable human connections with customers really are and how you can start building them in the year ahead.
- Global State of Customer Service by Microsoft – Based on a survey of more than 5,000 consumers across Brazil, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, this report provides comprehensive data and analysis that illustrates how prioritizing customer service performance leads to brand loyalty that increases customer retention and grows revenue.
By leveraging these resources, founders can gain a deeper understanding of customer retention tactics, strengthening their business against the odds and giving them a greater competitive advantage.