7 Ineffective Retention Tactics [+What to Do Instead]

My first call as a customer service rep was similar to my first time driving a car. Sure, I've seen other people do it and I've been in a car myself, but driving a car is much different than riding in one. While we got to our destination, there were plenty of unexpected stops and bumps along the way.

我的客户服务电话几乎相同。是的，我解决了客户的问题，但我不会说这是一次令人愉快的经历。我不得不搁置客户，请一个同事进行确认，然后在我紧张地试图传达答案时对我的解释感到困惑。虽然客户得到了他们所需的东西，但我的目的还有很大的改进空间。

Fortunately, I did improve — in both my driving and my customer service career. I learned what strategies worked and which ones were less effective. By avoiding the less effective ones and instead, focusing on what was working, I started to produce positive experiences more consistently.

In this post, I put together a list of some of the most ineffective customer retention strategies as well as some ideas for what your service reps can do instead.

7无效的保留策略

1. Solving for Convenience Instead of the Customer's Needs

While you may know your company policy by heart, chances are your customers don't. Even if they did, they're more concerned about getting an answer than they are about following all of your company's rules.

在这种情况下，客户服务代表很容易依靠公司政策作为快速的选择。bob全站app尽管大多数客户都会了解您不能违反公司的规则，但这并不意味着他们仍然对体验感到满意。bob全站app之所以创建这种摩擦，是因为客户认为代表和企业正在对其进行反对，即使在大多数情况下，公司政策都是为了使客户受益。bob全站app

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While you certainly shouldn't break company policy — at least without special permission — you also shouldn't completely discard a customer's question just because it goes against policy. At the very least, you should see how much you can help the customer within the boundaries you're given.

This extra effort will go a long way in showing the customer that you genuinely care about their experience. You're not just giving them a simple "no" and sending them on their way. You're giving them a thoughtful explanation about why you're unable to help and providing them with options for moving forward.

2. Treating Customer Service as a Marketing Strategy

毫不奇怪，拥有良好客户服务的公司在保留客户方面更加成功。但是，客户服务不是营销或销售策略，应将其视为您的业务部门。

Sales and marketing teams attract leads, promote campaigns, and close deals. Customer service is all about helping customers and not expecting anything in return. If you start looking for returns on every service case, your customers will think your support team is trying to turn a profit rather than helping them solve problems.

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Instead of focusing on customer retention and repeat sales, your team should prioritizecustomer needsfirst. Whenever someone calls your business or sends an email, your first step should be to assess what the customer wants and how you can help them fulfill that need. Once you do that, then you can tell them all you want about your loyalty programs, promotional discounts, or whatever campaigns your marketing and sales teams are working on.

3. Trying to Buy Customer Loyalty

This is a common trap that many customer service teams fall into. When you make a mistake, you try to buy back yourcustomer's goodwill有了礼物和折扣，认为这将弥补他们的经验不佳。

In reality, it takes about12positive experiences to make up for one poor one. So, you're 20% discount may not be enough to win back a frustrated or angry customer even though you're trying your best to make amends.

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Rather than throwing money at the problem, a more effective strategy is personalizing your approach with each customer. Some may want that 20% discount, some may want to speak with a manager, others just may want to voice their feedback online.

Regardless of what it is, you shouldn't assume a gift or discount will solve the problem. After all, it's hard to place a monetary value on a customer's poor experience.

4. Focusing Too Much on Speed Instead of Quality

每个客户服务团队都担心速度，也有充分的理由。有很多服务指标可以衡量响应时间以及代表接听客户所需的时间。大多数企业都会跟踪其代表的响应速度，并将不断努力以改善该指标。

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While speed is important to customer service, it's not the only thing that customers are looking for. In fact, only12%of Americans said that "lack of speed" is their biggest frustration with customer service teams while 27% of Americans said that "lack of effectiveness" was their biggest.

At the end of the day, good customer service will always prevail. Customers want fast answers, but they also want those answers to be correct. They might be happy at first if you give them a speedy solution, but they'll be even more upset if they find that solution doesn't work and they have to come back for more help. That extra five minutes that you spend checking your work can end up saving the customer a lot of time in the future.

5. Prioritizing Customer Acquisition Over Retention

In some cases, businesses won't give much thought to customer retention at all. Instead, they'll focus on acquiring new customers rather than retaining the ones they already have.

The problem with this approach is that it's much cheaper to retain a customer than it is to acquire a new one. In fact, it's5-25次获取新客户比保留现有客户更昂贵。即使您拥有世界上最好的收购策略，也总是可以从您的customer baseif you keep people happy after you win over their business.

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One of the most effective ways to retain customers is to prioritizecustomer success. A customer success team works with buyers to ensure everyone gets the most value out of your products and services. They make sure customers not only understand how to use your product but also why they need it to be successful.

This helps you guide customers toward positive experiences that eventually lead to repeat purchases. Once a customer achieves their goal while using your product, they'll want to replicate that success in the future. When they need to buy again, your brand will be the first they think of because you have a proven track record of success.

6. Providing the Same Service to Every Customer

Sometimes businesses will take a one-size-fits-all approach to customer service. This means they provide the same exact service to every person that reaches out to them.

The benefit of this strategy is that each customer is treated fairly. The downside is that it significantly limits your team's ability to delivercustomer delight.If you treat every customer the exact same way, you can't personalize the interaction and create an experience that's unique for them. Sure, you may still solve the problem, but you won't generate the delight that makes customers want to come back to your business.

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This is where aCRMcan really come in handy. You can record important information about your customers and store it in your CRM for later use.

例如，假设客户要求您仅在下午与他们联系。您可以将此注释存储在CRM中，以便下次客户伸出援手，处理案件的服务代表将知道只能在下午伸出。客户不必重复此请求，很高兴知道您的公司记得他们以前的互动。bob全站app

Here's a real example that explains why personalization is important to customer retention.

7. Avoiding New Customer Service Channels

Phone and email are excellent channels for customer service, but they're not the only ones that customers are using. Live chat is becoming increasingly popular and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are often leveraged for customer service, too. With all of these options now widely available, more customers are choosing channels that fit their immediate needs rather than just defaulting to the traditional mediums like phone and email.

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你不必采用查每一位客户服务nnel available, but you do need to offer support on the ones that your customers are using most. Now that they have options, customers expect your brand to integrate its support services within the channels that they're using. They don't want to have to navigate away from what they're doing just because they have a quick question for your brand. They want to be able to ask their question from the same interface they're working on, then continue working after they're quickly provided with an answer.

要了解一些成功的客户保留趋势，请查看此列表客户忠诚度统计.