Retaining customers is the most cost-effective method to boost revenue. Acquiring new business is significantly more costly—up to five times more expensive—compared to retaining existing clients. Additionally, improving retention yields higher ROI, with a 5% increase in retention potentially leading to a profit boost of up to 95%. Long-term customers contribute the most to revenue, making a strong customer retention strategy essential for businesses at any growth stage.

To retain customers, you need to implement customer-centric and goal-oriented strategies. Be sure to reinforce objectives, personalize touchpoints, share usage insights, and prove your product's value. Consistently demonstrating your commitment to their success strengthens your relationship and ensures they see your partnership's ongoing benefits. Ultimately, these efforts will foster loyalty and drive sustainable growth for your business.

Reinforce Goals and Objectives

After a purchase, a seamless transition from sales to customer success and a user-friendly onboarding process are crucial. Poor onboarding can have a negative impact on the customer's experience with your product or service. The CS team should use onboarding to ensure success through frequent touchpoints, personalized experiences, and helpful resources. A positive onboarding experience boosts long-term retention and expansion.

Personalization is Key

Every customer has unique needs and goals, so personalization at each touchpoint is essential. Customers expect a customized experience after investing in a product. CSMs should align frequently on each customer’s goals and provide tailored guidance. Sharing personalized insights and data builds trust and boosts retention. Ensure your CS team knows each customer’s goals and pain points, can deliver concrete ROI data, and is ready to adjust if goals change.

Some personalized data-driven presentations you might send frequently may consist of:

Business Reviews (QBRs, EBRs)

Customer Health Checks

Monthly Check-Ins

Onboarding Reviews

Pilot Reviews

Renewal Decks‍

Here are some essential steps CSMs should follow when creating data-driven content:

Define the customer journey
As a foundation, map out the stages of your customer journey. These stages may include discovery, negotiation, onboarding, adoption, renewal, and expansion.

Develop the narrative
Once the journey map is built, determine which story you want to tell. Focus on the customer’s goals and objectives to build a story that resonates.

Determine the data you need
Choose data that will move your story along at each stage in the customer journey. During onboarding, focus on account data and customer goals. In the adoption stage, focus on user and feature adoption. Then, during renewal, use the data pulled in previous stages to compile ROI data.

Make it scalable
To implement data-driven storytelling, the process needs to be able to grow with your business. Automate the process, create data-driven content templates, and improve your CS team’s access to essential customer data.

Share Usage Insights

During the customer journey, especially the adoption stage, share product usage insights, even if they aren't favorable. Providing recommendations for increasing user and feature adoption positions you as a trusted advisor and helps customers achieve better results.

Prove Product Value

To retain customers, demonstrate that your product is essential to their business. As Productboard states, "Product value is the benefit a customer gets by using a product to satisfy their needs, minus associated costs." Ensure the benefits of your product significantly outweigh the costs to be considered business-critical.

Retaining customers requires consistent feedback, be sure to keep your CS team, product team, sales team, and executives in the feedback loop. Regularly connect with customers, use data to spot warning signs, share these with key stakeholders, and collaborate to address issues. Keep customers informed about new developments and monitor churn trends. Effective feedback builds trust by ensuring your team is responsive to customer needs.

‍