Xero’s predictions for business trends in 2021 put a spotlight on customer loyalty, with many businesses only able to survive the pandemic through a loyal and patient customer base. There is no denying that customer loyalty is important in growing and maintaining a successful business, but how much should you focus on retention in your business? In fact, there are lots of reasons that loyal customers should be the backbone of your business, here are 5. Plus, according to an article by Forbes, increasing your customer retention by 5% could improve profits by 25% - 95%.
Deloitte research suggests that 38% of businesses moving to cloud based solutions, like WorkGuru, do so to improve customer service. While there are plenty of ways you can improve loyalty through your business strategy, the right project management system will also be passively helping you in the background. Here are four ways that investing in the right project management solution is helping you build a loyal customer base.
It’s commonly said that customers don’t buy from businesses, they buy from people. However, as you grow your business, it's not always practical to have one port of call for customers. Your sales team job should be focused on new opportunities, but you don’t want your customers to feel like they are being “pawned off”.
With a powerful project management system, you can help to build a consistent experience no matter who the customer reaches out to. With a single shared resource about the client, their past projects and preferences, your team always looks familiar with the client. This improves customer loyalty as it not only makes dealing with your business faster and easier than seeking alternatives, but also makes the client feel they are important (after all, everyone knows their name).
“True friends” your business are high profit, repeat customers. These customers keep coming back for more in a way that benefits your business time and time again. With a project management system that assigns projects to clients, it’s easy to find the accounts that you should focus on. You can pinpoint clients with frequent, high revenue work to build a strong relationship with.
Working closely with these clients to build customer loyalty helps your business to foster repeat, profitable work. Whether you use this information to implement a loyalty program, or simply to pull together your Christmas gift list, by taking a structured approach you are able eliminate wasted time and money fostering unprofitable relationships. Project management systems enable this by making the information readily available without the need for deliberate data gathering or analysis.
Because project management systems become the richest source of information about your business, they become the easiest way to understand your business. Good relationships start with strong and clear expectations and project management systems help you understand what that looks like.
By collecting information on each project, you can paint a clear picture of how long certain tasks take, and what the hard cost for your business is. Armed with this information, you are able to set clear deadlines and costs out to your customer, and will be more likely to be able to stick to them and make a profit.
If you want a client to come back time and time again, it's important to be able to deliver a consistent service and by knowing your capabilities you can make predictions and quotes with confidence.
If you are keeping track of what your customers are ordering, asking for, agreeing to and rejecting you get stronger insights into your customers wants and needs. By getting these key insights into what is selling best with the data recorded in your project management system you can shape your offerings to appeal more to your existing and potential customers. Afterall, your business exists because you're able to fill a need in your clients lives, so the better you're able to meet that need, the more likely you are to foster loyal customers and improve the success of your organisation.
Because you have identified through your project management system the most loyal clients, you also have an audience that may be willing to try out your new offerings and give you honest feedback on what they like and how they feel you can improve.
Customer loyalty is priceless, and can be one of your businesses most important assets. If you think a project management system is the right solution for your business to start fostering stronger relationships with your clients, or want to know more, get in touch with our team.