Customer Retention Strategies - Executive

Customer Retention Strategies - Executive Summary

The customer retention strategy the company I work for relies on is actually comprised of four specific tactics. The first and most costly is the assigning of dedicated, exclusive account managers for the largest customers, as many of these biggest customers have highly complex demands and requirements. These account managers are from customer service and often team up with the sales force to ensure the largest customers' requirements are met on time. The second major tactic used for increasing customer retention is to offer value-added promotions and services to our best customers, and this approach is somewhat successful yet needs to be measured more effectively. The third tactic is the segmentation strategies that concentrate on the most urgent unmet needs of customers and seeks to align our product and services strategies with their needs. The fourth tactic used is event-based marketing programs. Typing all these tactics together into a unified strategy requires a constant focus on measuring how effective they are through the use of analytics to gauge retention rate of customers.

Main Conclusions

The following are the major conclusions from this critique of the customer retention strategies for the company I work for:

First, the four tactics our company uses is delivering results and it's estimated our company has approximately a 60% retention rate. Yet the contribution of each of these tactics in hard numbers is not known, so our company is constantly re-shifting the mix of these four tactics that comprise our strategy.

Second, there is no win/loss analysis to determine how effective the combination of these strategies in conjunction with each other. When we lose a customer these is much anecdotal discussion yet nothing definitive.

Third, there is no process in place to take the lessons learned from customer retention programs and change product strategies. The link between customer retention and product direction is not in place and therefore it can take years before any lasting change comes to products.

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