"Follow the Leader", Featuring Mike Aoki

What do you think is overlooked by contact center leadership, that hinders their customer retention efforts?

Customer retention is a relationship rather than an event!

Too much emphasis is placed on "saving" customers. That is like waiting until the end of a romantic relationship to tell someone you love them. By then it is too late. Minor frustrations, unfilled needs and finally a "trigger" event cause a breakup.

"EVERY customer contact is a retention opportunity!" Train your agents to look for ways to improve customer experience on every interaction. How can you add value? Look for opportunities to help. For instance, suggest automatic renewals, so customers avoid service interruptions. Offer paperless billing to save the environment and make record keeping easier for customers. Make your customers feel valued. Make it easy for them to stay loyal.

In addition, look for opportunities to add positive emotion during customer interactions. Apologize when appropriate. Be gracious. Use friendly, but professional language in both verbal and written communication. Little things count in a relationship. So, remember to make your customer feel appreciated.

Remember: "Every customer contact is a retention opportunity!" 

Mike Aoki is the President of Reflective Keynotes Inc., a Canadian training company that helps contact centers improve their sales and customer retention results. A contact center expert, Mike serves on the advisory council of the Greater Toronto Area Contact Center Association and was Master of Ceremonies for five of their Annual Conferences. He was also chosen by ICMI.com as one of the “Top 50 Customer Service Thought Leaders on Twitter” for 2014-17.

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Kindness, Customer Retention, and the Contact Center Agent

By Sean Hawkins

By definition, customer retention is the activity an organization undertakes in order to reduce customer from leaving the business relationship. It is a shared responsibility of every person and department in a company. Most often though, it is the contact center that interacts with those customers who wish to leave. While the functional role of retention is housed within a specific team, everyone in customer service impacts the company’s ability to preserve customers.

Most retention efforts occur when a customer has expressed a desire to leave the business relationship. This is often too late, and may come at a high price to your bottom line. Furthermore, once the incentives offered to keep a customer expire, they still leave. I believe the process of reducing customer churn is an ongoing process that starts at the beginning of the relationship. It should take place before dissatisfaction arises, and continue over the customer life cycle. Additionally, policies, processes and procedures, should be developed to make the relationship easy, beneficial and fair to your customers. One of the easiest ways to begin, is through your customer service team(s).

In particular, customer service agents should take a proactive approach. They must be empowered and encouraged to help build customer loyalty. As the saying goes, “You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.” I know someone is saying, "Why would you call your customer a fly?" Simmer down my dear friend! I only suggest it is easier for people to like you if you are pleasant, rather than unpleasant.

With this in mind, below are some quick and easy ideas contact centers can implement:

• Discounts
• Free service
• Gift cards
• Contests
• Thank You cards
• Acknowledgment of milestones
• Newsletters
• Reports, whitepapers or books
• Self-help tools
• Random acts of kindness

These ideas allow the contact center agent to be proactive in the retention process rather than reactive. Don’t wait until a customer is frustrated! Kindness has a greater impact when it is unexpected and unwarranted. In other words, be kind at all times, not once the customer is upset, and the relationship begins to sour.

When kindness is displayed as a gesture of appreciation, or used to aid the customer's journey, they aren't viewed as retention. Rather, they are opportunities to create loyalty, brand ambassadors, and build long lasting relationships. But more importantly, it's great to be kind, simply for the sake of being kind.

Some may see this as a loyalty initiative, but I don't. Loyalty, and your ability to retain customers, are the results of your kindness. 

I have over 15 years of progressive call center leadership and experience in the public, private and government sectors. I have led or consulted contact centers of various sizes across numerous industries. Additionally, I’ve implemented new technology and products, while maintaining award-winning contact centers.

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Do You Know Why Your Customers Are Leaving?

By Chris Truitt

Many of us think of business as a complex organism with many moving parts. While this is certainly true, business concepts can be simplified to two main objectives, Customer Acquisition and Retention. Acquiring customers isn't easy and can often be a costly endeavor. Retaining customers is often a matter of listening to your customer's concerns, understanding their needs and putting your business in a position to meet these needs.

Forward Thinking

This is perhaps one of the most over used terms, and we're only half way through the year. I personally don't know of another way to think. But, before we plan for the future, we must live in the present and deal with the problems of today. This is not shortsighted. Thinking forwardly without dealing with the issues right in front of you would be shortsighted.

Act on Customer Feedback

An important component of forward thinking is strategy. Your strategy for improving your business has to be based on an clear understanding of what is working, what is not working and what needs to be improved. But how can business leaders definitively know and quantify the things that aren't working? The answer to this, is customer feedback. Consider surveying existing customers and customers that request to cancel. Retention managers should immediately know the top reasons for customer cancellations at any time. This is valuable data and insight to your customer's thinking that can be applied to modify your retention efforts, and to improve your business processes.

Chris Truitt is an Email Deliverability Manager with over 11 years of experience. During this time, Chris has consulted with many clients, large and small on best practices and provided strategic guidance on improving inbox placement. His objective is to help businesses on realizing their full marketing potential by first understanding the customer’s needs and interests and structuring alignment of the marketing campaign to meet those needs. As a pragmatist, Chris has an analytical, result oriented approach to business. He believes a dive into data and historical performance can lead us to making well informed decisions. In his new role he has had an opportunity to offer insight to executive leaders and contributed to key decisions and business strategy. Chris resides in Raleigh, North Carolina where he lives with his wife and their two sons.

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