3 Tips for Customer Retention

What’s up, everyone!

I know it’s been a couple of weeks since I sent out a newsletter.

I want to take a moment to real quick thank you all for patiently waiting as few family events slowed me down emotionally and mentally. I am absolutely thankful for the support you have shown.

Also as a writer, I am still very much finding my balance between researching, writing ✍️ useful stuff for you! So for that reason, I am going to be sending some bonus newsletters this month covering the most asked questions so hang tight!

With that let’s get in!

Building companies and businesses is hard and imagine acquiring customers and not being able to retain them.🤯

Here are a few tips that you could employ to retain your dear customers

✅ Trust

Don't we all love when we get surprises? For example, you are dissatisfied with the service of the company and you call, but as you get on call with the rep, you get pleasantly surprised on how your call is handled and if you are offered a money-back without you even asking. What impression that does that leave with you?

Well there is one company we all love and does this so well. In fact, it’s one of their 12 Principles. These principles are not just for paper but in fact built-in their internal processes including hiring.

Can you guess the company? Well you guessed it right! Amazon!

How do I know? Read about their principles here

I won’t go into all of them but my personal favorite is Customer Obsession!

Amazon is the first company that set the bar so high for with no questions asked returns policy and money back that they gained customer’s trust. When building your products and services, be always thinking about how can you gain customer’s trust!

Btw I also did an interview with Hardik Shah who is a Tech lead and been at Amazon AWS for 8+ years and talks about the expectation of technical knowledge for PMs. Find it here. whether you are a new PM or a mid-level PM I think you can find value.

Also, check this link if you are preparing for AMZ interviews.

✅ Set clear expectations of your product

General advice goes like “pick one thing and do it well” better than anyone else in the world.

To add to that I will say “Pick ONE thing and do it well, long enough that you become known for it!

“That guy” “that gal” type thing whether you are building a personal brand or your comapny’s. Your product has to solve pain points! But your messaging of what pain points you are solving should be loud and clear!

I wish I questioned or seek clarity on the goals from my management in my early career years. I can’t say, the goal of what we were building and why we were always clear. So as a PM, if you are unclear of what and why of your product, I can guarantee you cannot do good job of explaining well to your customers.

if you don’t get clarity from your management, keep asking the hard questions.

✅ Don’t overpromise and under deliver

Whether or not you have a happy customer who will tell their friends about your product, depends on not just your product but the overall experience product.

In Tech products (I’ll talk about B2C here) Discovery, Onboarding and In-App (web or mobile) experience are all equally important aspects that are key to a great experience along with customer support.

3.1. Discovery simply means how did the customer hear about your product? let’s take an example of Dropbox. How many of us use it? how did we hear about it? probably friends’ or colleagues’ right to store and share photos? Although google drive existed way before.

3.2 Onboarding simply means the user’s experience to log in to the app and get set up to use. How many times we download apps and then leave because the whole onboarding experience is too lengthy.

3.3. In-App experience goes to the point to solving the problem and building features that solve a real problem. if you are solving a real problem, are you simplifying the overall experience to use the product?

3.4 Customer Support — if a customer gets stuck, how can they reach out to the company and get their issue resolved?

I’ll say this again don’t over promise and under deliver.

Here is what inspired me this week.

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