The Ultimate Guide to Growing (& Keeping!) Your Customer Base

“我如何吸引更多客户？”

This age-old question has left business owners scratching their heads for centuries. Until the Internet, companies could only influence customers who walked through their doors. Nowadays, businesses can reach customers anywhere and will do almost anything to grow their customer base.

除了获得新客户外，企业还更加专注于保留现有客户。那是因为5%increase in customer retention can lead to a 75% increase incustomer lifetime value。Customers who are familiar with your company are more likely to buy from you again and will provide more value to your business over time.

However, even with modern technology, business owners still struggle to find effective ways to acquire new customers and retain them. If you want your business to be successful, define the most effective way to optimize lead acquisition as well as客户保留。

在这篇文章中，我们将分解客户群的含义，并提供有关您公司如何发展和保留其客户群的提示。bob全站app

It's important to identify your customer base because these people are incredibly valuable to your business. They buy your products the most and rely on your company to achieve their goals. Recognizing these customers will help your marketing, sales, and customer service teams build a productive relationship with your customer base.

Within your customer base is a subset of customers who are referred to as your installed customer base. These customers are at a specific point in thecustomer journey这将他们与您的客户群中的其他人区分开来。

For example, HubSpot's customer base would be anyone who has purchased or used one of ourfree or premium tools。However, HubSpot's installed based would only consist of the customers who are currently using HubSpot products in their day-to-day workflow. By highlighting this subsection of our customer base, we can personalize our marketing, sales, and customer service offers to fit the specific needs of our active users.

Now that you're able to identify your customer base and your installed base, you're probably wondering how to make them bigger. Let's talk about how you can use customer service to grow, develop, and retain your customer base.

如何发展您的客户群

While marketing and sales teams play a major role in attracting and engaging your customers, customer service teams grow and retain your customer base by creating a delightful客户体验。这种努力使客户回来更多，为upselling and cross-selling.以下是您的客户服务团队可以用来建立和保留客户群的一些策略。

1.提供出色的客户服务

This one may seem obvious, but so many companies fail to deliver exceptional customer service. In fact,research显示，由于客户服务的差，有60％的消费者停止使用品牌开展业务。客户期望完美，甚至您公司的失误也可能导致流失。bob全站app

如果您想提供出色的客户服务，那么与有需要或不满的客户交往不应被视为繁琐的。相反，您的团队应该将这些客户视为发展客户群的机会。立即回复他们的要求，这些客户将更有可能再次购买您的产品，因为他们觉得您的公司已经投资了成功。bob全站app集线器研究甚至显示93％的客户可能会与拥有出色客户服务的公司进行重复购买。

Customer service is also a major influencer of customer retention.学习reveal 67% of churn is preventable if a customer's issue is resolved during the first service interaction. This puts more pressure on your customer service team to fulfill the customer's request and do so in a timely manner.

2.鼓励客户倡导

It can be difficult to attract new customers to your business, especially when they've never heard of your product or service. Customers are skeptical of advertisement and most won't be swayed solely by your marketing efforts. Rather, they need to feel confident your company is aligned with and invested in their goals.

One of the best ways to build trust with new leads is to leverage yourcustomer advocates。These customers provide referrals and testimonials that improve your brand's credibility in the eyes of potential customers. In fact,research显示91％的消费者信任在线评论，同意他们信任个人建议。因此，即使您的客户拥护者没有直接推荐新的潜在客户，鼓励和宣传他们的反馈也将有助于您的公司显得更加值得信赖。bob全站app

3. Create Freemium Offers

免费增值是吸引潜在潜在客户注意力的好方法。有了免费增值的报价，公司可以免费提供一些有价值的东西，以换取客户信息。赠送的项目可以像PDF下载一样简单，也可以像免费的原型软件（例如免费的原型软件）一样简单。bob电竞官方下载

例如,HubSpot的提供freemium versionof its marketing, sales, and customer service tools. Users don't have to pay to use these tools, but they do have to supply an email address and create a HubSpot account. This way, customers can get a taste of how useful HubSpot tools can be for their business. Then, HubSpot can analyze the product usage reports for these users and craft personalized customer service and sales offers based on the tools they use most.

4.采用客户服务工具

As you start to accumulate more customers, your customer service team must adapt to handle the increase in customer demand. One option your business has is to hire more reps to field service requests. This route is less desirable because it's expensive and time-consuming to complete. Instead, you can usecustomer service toolsto expand the bandwidth of your customer service team without hiring new employees.

您可以集成到客户服务团队中的一种工具是help desk。一个帮助台is a platform that hosts a variety of useful customer service tools, like a knowledge base, aticketing system, and a shared inbox. These tools automatically organize and distribute incoming service requests which makes it easier for reps to manage their open cases. Instead of having to keep track of what they're working on, customer service tools optimize your reps' workflow and free up time for them to take more cases each day.

5. Collect Customer Feedback

If you're running out of ideas for how to attract new customers, look at your customer feedback. Positive feedback tells you what you're doing well and what you should boast about to new leads. Negative feedback highlights where you need to improve and what needs to change to increase customer retention. Keeping close tabs on your customer feedback gives you a better idea of what your customer base values most about your company.

Service feedback should be collected after a支持票is closed or at the conclusion of a customer service interaction. You can also ask customers for feedback after a purchase is made, as you might be curious about the customer service efforts of your on-the-floor sales team.

There are many effective ways to collect customer feedback. For example, provide customers with surveys after a purchase or service interaction.NPS®调查很棒，因为它们为您的公司提供有关客户的定性和定量数据。bob全站app如果您的团队在收集答复方面遇到困难，请查看其中一些可以使用的策略获得客户反馈。

6. Create a Customer Success Program.

Successful businesses understand that a客户的价值increases as they buy from your company over time. If you can convince people to keep coming back to your business, your customer base will continue to grow consistently even if you're only acquiring a handful of customers each month.

One effective customer retention tool is a客户成功s program。Customer success teams monitor individual accounts for roadblocks within the customer's journey. If they anticipate friction, they can reach out to the customer and help them navigate around the issue before it escalates into a significant problem. This can make all the difference in preventing customer churn, especially when you can remove pain points before customers even know they exist.

7. Consider Web Accessibility.

如果您有一个网站，请务必记住，您的品牌对任何可以访问互联网的人都可以看到，但并非每个人都以相同的方式使用互联网。有些人的局限性需要在计算机上启用特殊功能，以帮助他们访问您的网站。如果您的网站与这些程序不兼容，则该受众无法满足您的内容，这意味着您错过了转换潜在线索的机会。

Web accessibilitycan open the door to a new ecommerce audience that your brand might not have considered. For example, the graphic below shows us how much money was spent on ecommerce in 2016. The red circle at the bottom indicates that nearly £12 billion in potential revenue was lost due to web accessibility issues.

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If you're new to web accessibility, reviewing the准则can help you update your site so you can become accessible to all audiences. Not only is this a smart move for your business, but it's a step you can take to make your business more inclusive.

8. Optimize Your Customer Loyalty Program.

您的客户忠诚度计划是客户保留和获取的另一种有用工具。它可以使您最忠实的客户参与品牌的促销报价，当客户将您的公司与您的市场竞争对手进行比较时，它可能是竞争优势。bob全站app实际上，69%of consumers say that loyalty programs influence their decision when considering a new brand.

One way that you can optimize your customer loyalty program is by adopting a tiered membership structure. Tiers encourage customers to continue buying from your business and create a sense of community as they progress through each level of loyalty. Each tier should have its own special rewards and the rewards should increase in value as customers move toward the highest tier. This is where your team can estimatecustomer lifetime valueand determine how much a person should spend at your business before they're considered to be one of your most loyal customers.

9.游戏化客户体验。

Gamification is the method of adding playful elements to normal tasks or procedures to make the process more enjoyable or engaging. Businesses are now using gamification as a way to attract new users by including gamified elements that enhance their customer experience. The idea is that customers will not only enjoy using the product, but they will want to keep using it because it's similar to a hobby or game.

在下面的示例中，我们可以看到HubSpot如何使用游戏化学院培训课程。These courses have pop-up quizzes and resources that make the training more interactive and engaging. Once you pass a course, you receive a personalized certificate and one of the exclusive badges below that you can proudly display on your HubSpot account.

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10. Personalize Customer Onboarding.

Once someone completes a purchase with your brand, the next few moments are critical to a customer's journey. If they struggle with using the product or understanding user-training, they may abandon your product altogether and seek a more user-friendly alternative. In fact, according toWyzowl, 55% of consumers have returned a product because they didn't understand how to use it.

您的客户入职计划可以通过为每个用户个性化经验来解决此问题。与其采用千篇一律的方法，不如让您的团队与客户联系，看看您是否可以确定他们的特定需求和目标。如果您提供零售产品，请在包装上突出显示您的客户支持选项，以便客户确切地知道如何与您联系。使您的客户服务团队可供客户访问，这是提供可靠，实时支持的关键。

有关吸引新客户的更多方法，请阅读有关您的业务如何improve customer acquisition.