“Customer Retention” is kind of a buzzing word for the SaaS businesses on the digital platform. If you wonder why that’s exactly what matters for the businesses who have a monthly or annual recurring revenue. And to handle the tasks pertaining to customer retention, there is a Customer retention specialist who is also named as customer loyalty specialist.
So that’s relaxing to know someone is working on customer retention on behalf of you, right? Let’s know what exactly is on their plate!
How do I become a good customer retention specialist?
To be one, the mandatory thing that a candidate must have is a high school degree. That’s what is familiar among all the candidates for this role. It necessarily doesn’t mean you should not have the education beyond! That’s just the minimum criteria. Regardless of the specialization, the role in favor of customer success is a whole new thing that just started to evolve recently.
It doesn’t consider what subject you took but rather takes into account the qualities of the ideal candidate who fits into the responsibilities this role has to pitch.
So do you have working experience in a different field? It doesn’t matter to apply for this position. Somehow the qualities and the skills you gained in the previous experiences are what concerns the hiring manager more.
And if the experience or the roles closely dealt with the customers, then you are most advantageous! Mostly from the background experiences like sales, customer support, customer representative, cashier, accounting, or a candidate with bilingual speaking skills can add a lot of value.
And once hired, you’ll, of course, be given the training to be a reliable person for the customers and the business as well.
Learning resource– Customer Renewal Guide
What does a customer retention specialist do?
Are your customers in the urge of leaving the business with you anytime sooner or have raised a big deceiving ticket to the support team? The customer retention specialist’s task is to get them back! So, if you are wondering, that just is too much to handle, it’s not! You are trying to help them with their concerns, the best possible way by offering alternatives.
Their issues are your concerns, reaching out to them with the benefits of the product, collecting feedback, reminding them of the renewals, and documenting the troubles of the customers for the company to improvise their product and services!
Sounds pretty interesting, isn’t it? Well smartly making a move to get the angry birds to cool down is a much bigger challenging responsibility. If helping customers with resolutions solely concerns your personality then this role is so fascinating to jump right in and help them to be a great Customer retention specialist!
What is the salary trend of a customer retention specialist?
The customer retention specialist can expect somewhere from a starting salary of $31,000 to $61,000 as their maximum salary. So that brings the average to be $42,318. With years of experience, it varies in this range.
The career progression in this role is to be a senior customer retention specialist or a customer service manager!
- In the UK the salary is Euros 22,683/year.
- The salary is A$65,000/year in Australia.
- In India, the salary is INR 3,00,000/year.
5 secrets of a customer retention specialist
The impressive part of their day-to-day task lies in what they do to get the customer back which runs with tactics of how they handle the situation. When the approach is proactive, customer retention is well handled before the risk. But if there is a churning customer, it can either be in cases with miscommunication or loss of attention due to account per Customer Success Manager (CSM). Although there are 5 important things they consider to do in their practice.
Customer Success Platform
The customer success platform like CustomerSuccessBox serves as a savior to rescue. The situation is tougher when it’s about handling the churning customer. The insights from the data collected on the tool can give them an idea of the product usage, their engagement and track all the communication made earlier with the customer to exactly understand their situation, so to propose a better deal in order to retain them.
To illustrate, supposedly to give one of the features that are valuable to them for free for a shorter time until you fix the bug.
Sways with personalization!
The idea is to reach customers with something they like and circle it to work them out with the deal.
For this, the customer success tool can give much information to win them back. Everybody likes personalization that communicates with them specifically and eventually engages as it conveniences them with your understanding of the pain point.
Delights them with surprises.
Gifting customers can delight them in a way they can’t imagine. Some companies have sent cakes to make customers happy and some have sent a thank you letter or an appreciation letter!
The gift need not be expensive but emotional that connects their sentiments. Even a note with a personalized message that connects them to your brand can make an impact.
Make an apology for the mistakes.
Inevitable mistakes from the company at times are probable and if the customer decides to churn for the same, it is still valid. But the situation can still be under control and the customers can continue to buy if you apologized for the mistakes that occurred. And also conveying how you would stop the mistake from happening again can bring them sort of a release of tension in the air.
Portrays gratefulness
A brand can empower with great customer service. It’s that image they create about the brand in their head that brings them back often to you. A simple thank you for coming from other than the emails can touch their sentiment depicting that your brand makes time for their customers and can add in face value to those unfaced websites.
Additional Resource: How to maximise Net revenue retention
Wrapping up!
Customer retention is an important aspect of any business and it takes some effort from our end. The customer retention specialist can work out retaining customers for the business effectively. And implying customer retention strategies is much appreciated if it is planned out priorly and is tested with trial and error implementation to improvise the strategy as there is no one way or method that works and it varies from business to business.
