Refreshing Your Customer Retention Program In 2023

Tessa Burg: Hello, I’m Tessa Burg, the host of the Leader Generation podcast and today we are doing a Mod Op Minutes episode. It’s where we take a big topic and try and condense it down into six minutes or less.

Tessa Burg: So, today’s topic is refreshing your retention program in 2023. Why is retention so important, especially in 2023? Well, because nothing is certain. The only thing that is certain is that nothing is certain and it’s so important in those cases to protect the core. I stole that phrase from one of our clients at Nestlé. It was something he used to repeat to me all the time. Protect the core.

Tessa Burg: So, what is important about refreshing your retention program? First, start with three things. One, do you know why your customers leave? Two, and yes, I’m looking down at my notes, do you know why they stay? And three, do you know what their biggest challenges are right now? So, do you know why they leave? Do you know why they stay? And do you know what their biggest challenges are right now?

Tessa Burg: A lot of our clients do an awesome job on having client exit interviews, or doing regular market research around how their company is doing in communication and differentiating services and products and finding that unique space in which they operate. If you today, whether you’re on the consumer side or the business side, do not have a program in to collect feedback as to why your customers switch or leave your business, then 2023 is a great time to start.

Tessa Burg: Do you know why they stay? Do you have regular feedback loops with your best customers? Do you know who your best customers are? 2023 might be a great year to evaluate CDPs. Those are customer data platforms and they aggregate all the data you have about a customer into one place. So, you can start to see not only who your best customers are, but how did you acquire them. And start looking at your existing customer data as your true north and as your way of starting to craft better acquisition campaigns.

Tessa Burg: Three, do you know their biggest challenges? Let’s dive in deeper here. We have a lot of clients across many different industries experiencing a lot of the same three challenges.

Tessa Burg: Number one, hiring, hiring good people and keeping them.

Tessa Burg: Two, training, there’s more turnover. In fact, Gen Z, if you’re going after a younger workforce, no matter if your company’s amazing and great, on average, they expect to only be somewhere for 2.5 years. So, are you prepared next year or the following year to have an ongoing, highly engaging training program knowing that turnover, regardless of your best efforts, may just be a way we operate going forward, especially in industries like education, healthcare, food service, retail and staffing.

Tessa Burg: The third one is insights. A lot of our clients are always trying to stay up on trends, but if you are not a large manufacturer, large retailer, large healthcare system, and you’re in this middle tier, can, where are you getting this data about what trends are most important? And we see a lot of this middle tier businesses and independent operators and small businesses really struggling with getting affordable and highly valuable insights that truly will help grow their business in an accessible manner.

Tessa Burg: So, for us as companies who are larger, who might have more budget for marketing and research, how about your customers? There may be some strategies where your resources and some of the things you might even be taking for granted, such as hiring, training, insights, you can make available to your customers. And how do you do it in a way that differentiates you in the market? So, if you’re looking at your reasons for leaving and it feels like it’s all product complaints or price complaints, then you might be in a commoditized space, or your business may be commoditized, and focusing on retention and addressing your customers and client’s biggest challenges. Hiring, training and insights may be a channel for you to differentiate because people leave when they feel they can find a good substitute, but people stay and you retain your customers when they feel like they can’t live without you. And if you can help address one of those three major buckets, well, then they can’t live without you because the need for better hiring practices, the need for better training and the need for more insights is not going away.

Tessa Burg: So, good luck in 2023. Pull your data together. See where we have opportunities to learn more about what your customers or your clients want and how can you use your resources and unique expertise to solve something, so that they can’t live without you. Thanks and have a great year.