It is crucial for managed service providers to build long-term relationships with their customers as recurring payouts make up the biggest part of their profits. Here are 5 customer retention tactics that you may implement into your business in order to increase your B2B customer retention and eventually increase your recurring profits.
1. Solve their issues quickly and efficiently
It may seem obvious, but this is what your clients pay for. The less time it takes your team to spot and resolve the clients’ issues, the more satisfied your clients will be because their downtime will be minimized.
In order to improve, check all the requests from your clients and determine which ones require more time than the others. Check the workflow of your support system, set up priorities, and postpone the tasks that are of lesser significance, such as checking your mailbox or finding lost prospects.
2. Put customer satisfaction above upsells
Upselling additional services is a good tactics to increase your profits, but unless your customers are completely satisfied with your current services trying to sell them something else will end up badly. If you fail to do your job properly you may simply lose your clients as they will find someone who does the job better.
Invite your clients to your office on a regular basis; make inquiries on how satisfied they are with your services in order to spot the issues before they grow insurmountable. Be aware of all their complaints and suggestions.
3. Standardization is the key
In terms of IT services, standardization allows managed service providers to deliver their services in a more efficient way and at lower costs.
Just think about it. Which situation will require you to spend more time and money - installing the same operating system on all of your customers’ machines or installing a different system for different tasks? The answer is obvious.
If you declare in your offer that you work with only a limited number of infrastructures this may cut out potential customers who need something else. On the other hand, the more you work with a specific type of client, the better you can solve their issues and the greater will be the quality of your services, which will eventually lead to increasing your recurring profits.
4. Help clients plan
You will often meet the clients who have no idea of the latest IT innovations. Their hardware may be completely outdated; their software might be 10 versions behind the solution that is currently available. Having said that, get ready to work with their objections regarding additional costs to improve their infrastructure.
Help them see the necessity of upgrading their systems. Don't push all the updates on them at once. Help them plan their costs and make all the necessary updates gradually.
5. Transparency means trust
If you plan to build long and trusting relationships with your customers, make sure your actions are completely transparent.
Provide your clients with a full overview of their current infrastructure, send them monthly or weekly reports on what has been done during this period, and provide records of your expenses for any third-party software.
Bonus: Customer Retention KPIs
Whatever measures you take to keep your clients satisfied, it's good practice to measure associated KPIs. Here are 3 basic KPIs that you should constantly track on monthly, quarterly and yearly basis.
- Churn rate = (number of lost clients) / (total number of clients) x 100%. The best result is to aim for 10%. If you lose more than that, consider changing something in your business.
- Customer retention rate KPI = (Number of clients retained) / (number of lost clients)
- Monthly recurring revenue = sum of all monthly recurring payouts.
Conclusion
As long as you do your job properly, resolve your customers’ issues instantly, and follow all other tactics described in this article, you will successfully build long-term relationships with your clients. Ask for feedback on a regular basis to make sure that they are satisfied with your services and are not thinking of leaving you in favor of your competitors.
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Alexander Negrash is director of marketing at CloudBerry Lab. Read more CloudBerryLab blogs here.
