6 Things You Can Do To Blow Customers Away During Intake Phase
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Are you losing customers but don’t know what you’re doing wrong? Don’t worry, you aren’t alone. Thousands of businesses are in a similar, if not the same situation.
Losing customers is a fairly common thing and it happens to every business. But that doesn’t mean you can sit by and just watch. Identifying the reason and addressing it as efficiently as possible is what sets a great business apart from a good one.
According to research by Bain & Company, just a 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by anywhere between 25% to 95%. Given just these numbers alone, it’s obvious how important it is to ensure you don’t lose customers.
But it’s easier said than done. If it were easy, every business out there would have mastered it. That’s true. It’s not easy. However, it’s not that difficult either.
Chances are most businesses are facing the problem of losing customers because of the same few reasons. There are many easy-to-do things you can do to address these reasons and boost your customer retention.
In this article, we will take a look at these problems and what you can do to stop worrying about losing customers during the intake phase once and for all.
What Are the Impacts of Losing Customers?
Every business owner knows losing customers is bad. But how bad is it exactly?
Well… the answer to that question is that it depends. Different businesses will have to pay different prices if they fail to retain customers.
However, unlike the severity of the situation, the impact of losing customers is clear to see. Not only does a lost customer mean lost sales and revenue, but it also means that you missed feedback and the opportunity to improve.
Losing customers can be disheartening for your sales and marketing team, especially when they are reporting and reviewing their performance. But it doesn’t just stop there. The impact of losing customers is far-reaching and can affect the confidence of the entire organization.
Furthermore, every lost customer represents an opportunity for growth for your competition. Think about it – a dissatisfied customer who needs a similar solution that you provide stops using your products and services. Who do they go to? Your competitors.
Not only does this open up the possibility that your competitors learn of your processes and products, but it also means that there’s a higher chance of the lost customer dissuading other potential customers from working with you.
Now that we know the impacts of losing customers, let’s move on to some of the main reasons why you are facing the problem and how you can solve them.
You Don’t Know Your Customers’ Likes and Dislikes
The first step in building a good relationship with your customer is getting to know them. Only when you understand them is it possible to produce good results efficiently and consistently.
If you are losing customers, not knowing their likes and dislikes is a prime reason. If you don’t know them well enough, you will struggle to keep them satisfied. Furthermore, no matter how much effort you put into serving them if you fail to address what they think matters the most, none of your work will be rewarded.
Getting a firm grasp of your target audience’s preferences and pain points is a vital step in establishing a long-lasting working relationship. With a solid understanding of what they like and dislike, you will be able to focus all your efforts on things that your customers value the most.
Your Sales Process Is Outdated
Many businesses stick to doing things a certain way for no reason other than the fact that they had always been doing it that way. It might not seem obvious, but this is one of the main reasons that will lead to you losing customers.
“Why fix something if it’s not broken?” This thought process is incredibly dangerous to businesses. The market is rapidly changing and businesses have to adapt if they want to keep their place in it.
Customers expect a faster, better, and more convenient way of doing things. Having an outdated sales process that does not tick all the aforementioned criteria can be a major turn-off for customers.
Taking a modern approach to sales processes is a must if you want to keep your customers happy. Not only do they help you accomplish more with less effort, but they also help you boost connection rates and increase the flow of warm leads.
This will help you gain an advantage over your competitors, especially if they are stuck with the mindset mentioned above. Having a sales process that’s more optimized is going to make your service/products a lot more approachable and attractive to customers compared to those offered by your competition.
You Are Failing to Fulfill Promises You Made
Depending on the promises you have made, your customers will place different levels of expectations. And if you fail to meet those customer expectations, it can create a negative image of you and your business in their minds.
Meeting customer expectations can come off as a daunting task, especially because it’s hard to make everyone happy. Unfortunately, you have no choice but to meet those expectations if you want to retain customers.
And while it may seem impossible at first glance, it’s not that hard to get it right. What you should be focusing on is not keeping every single customer happy but to deliver on the promises you have made.
Additionally, if you manage to deliver more than what you promised, your customers will develop a positive impression of your business. However, that doesn’t mean you can set the bar low for the promises you make. Doing so will drive potential customers away.
What you should strive to do is deliver on all your promises while constantly trying to outdo yourself. Asking for feedback from your customers and improving your products and services based on that feedback can be another great way to make your customers feel heard. This will also drive up customer engagement.
Your Products and Services Don’t Show Value
What do customers invest in for a long time? A product or service they see value in. This is an obvious fact that barely anyone misses. However, what people don’t understand as easily is that just because your products and services have value does not mean your customers see them at first glance.
What seems obvious to you may not seem so for everyone. And it’s a big problem if you fail to show your products/service’s value to your customers.
If you succeed in communicating the value of your products/services with your customers, you will gain a customer who might stay for a long time. But if you fail to do so, they will most likely churn immediately.
To show your products/services have value effectively, it is imperative that you understand your customers and their goals. Once you have a clear grasp of these two things, you will be able to explain the value of your product and service to them, as well as how it will help them in achieving their goals.
Some great ways to show the value of your products/services are to share helpful tips and resources, take follow-ups, share client testimonials, etc. This will highlight the usefulness of your products/services and help them take inspiration from others’ experiences.
Your Customers Are Not Happy with Your Customer Service
As important as it is to have a great product and service, good customer service is just as important. Especially so during the start of their customer journey, when your customers are just getting used to your products and services.
They are a lot keener in communicating with you during this phase and great customer service can play a big part in winning their trust early on. Aside from this, good customer service will make it easier for them to decide on continuing to use your products/services for a long time.
Your customers are also more likely to communicate with you about any issues they are facing, as well as dissatisfaction they have had about the products/services. And if you address them properly, you can prevent unfavorable situations such as declining conversions and damaged reputations.
Customer service is one of the most important aspects for your business to get right. You should never overlook anything that might prevent you from delivering the best customer service if you want to avoid losing customers.
Your Customers Have No Idea What to Do During Onboarding
Do you remember your first day at a new school, a new job, or similar situations? You probably do.
When asked about this question, most people say they were either excited or nervous about it. An onboarding process makes your clients feel the same way. They are unfamiliar with your products and services. Because of this, they are either excited about getting to learn about it, or they are nervous.
However, the problem they often run into during onboarding is that they have no idea what to do. Even if your onboarding workflow is well-designed, it can prove to be ineffective if the clients aren’t comfortable during the intake phase. And chances are, they probably aren’t.
To ease their concerns and ensure they make the most out of it, it is necessary for there to be a self-paced onboarding for clients. This makes it so that they are never overwhelmed by anything you share about your products and services. Similarly, it also makes it so that the onboarding process isn’t too slow and won’t bore them.
Different clients prefer going through the onboarding process at different paces and it’s simply not feasible to get the pace right for all of them if the process isn’t self-paced.
A self-paced onboarding workflow will enable your clients to go through the process at a pace that best suits their learning speed. Furthermore, it also allows for them to put the process on hold if they are occupied with some other matter.
How to deliver an outstanding client intake experience
Businesses losing customers is a fairly common thing during the early intake phase because of the high churn rate. This has several negative impacts on your business, including lost sales and revenue, decreased morale and confidence, damaged reputation, etc.
In the long term, this can have serious negative consequences for your business. But if you manage to impress your customers during the onboarding process, you will be able to reduce the high churn rate and get yourself a lot more loyal customers.
However, while doing so isn’t impossible, it can be a tough task. Especially if you don’t have the right tools for it.
Some things clients often complain about during the onboarding process are onboarding checklists and cumbersome document collection processes. Despite the drastic changes in the way we do things, these things have remained just as inefficient and time-consuming as they once were.
If you are looking for ways to get rid of those lengthy processes and make your onboarding efficient and professional, you should check out Clustdoc.
Now that you’re here
Clustdoc is a client onboarding orchestration platform used by modern teams around the world. With Clustdoc, you can run automated workflows for requesting, reviewing and verifying new customers’ data, documents and contracts – without juggling between tools.
If your team is managing new customers using emails, spreadsheets and PDFs, you’ll probably love using Clustdoc.
