How to Boost Your Retention in a Virtual Era with Custom Inbox Simulations
No matter what your business has gone through in 2020, this year has completely altered your outlook. Yet, there is one constant to grow your business – retaining your customers. Businesses that retain their clients spend less time making up lost ground and more time building towards the future.
We can help you with that, but first, let’s look at how important customer retention is, by the statistics.
- HBR tells us it’s at least 5x more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain an existing one. Some measures say that figure is closer to 25x!
- 68% of customers will never return after leaving your business, according to Accenture.
- 61% of those departing customers will go directly to a competitor, according to Kissmetrics.
- On the plus side, a 5% increase in customer retention can increase revenue by 25-95%, according to Bain & Company. That’s almost unfathomable.
- In addition, existing customers are 50% more likely to try your new product offerings and spend 31% more compared to new customers.
- And retained customers spend an average of 67% more after 2 years than they spend in the first 6 months of working with you.
So, yeah, the data is clear. We want to keep our customers at all costs. It costs less to acquire new customers, they bring us more revenue, and your business reaps the rewards, even if we have the occasional headache.
In a time like today, nothing is more important than retaining your clients.
To do so, we have to be truly customer-centric. This means creating the right mix of products, consistently delivering value, and above all, providing great customer support.
That’s what we’re here to talk about today – how to make your customer support great.
Your Most Important Employee
There is something of a base principle in business that can be easy to forget. Keep your customers happy.
By proxy, your people on the front lines are the most important touchpoints you have with customers. The better they are at their jobs, the higher your customer retention. Of course, we know this, but what do we do about it?
Support is sometimes an afterthought – an entry point for new employees to learn the business, and hence, an area of high turnover. While every business is different, employee turnover in support roles is 2-3x higher than average turnover, according to research from QATC and Glowtouch. Think about that!
Improve Your Customer Support with CapsimInbox
As experts in the education industry, it’s only natural for us to look to training as the key to this puzzle. If we can train our team to better support customers, we should see increases in customer retention. If we see increases in customer retention, our business does better, and we also lose fewer good employees.
We have approached this problem rather methodically. So how do you get started? Follow these steps:
1. Search through your internal support software for common support themes.
In our case, we use a great product called Help Scout to track all customer conversations and common topics.
2. Ask your support team about the most common questions they hear.
These should be obvious to your team when discussed. These are the issues or questions that come up multiple times a week.
3. Select 3-5 of the most common scenarios, and note their themes.
Ideally, you find topics that span your business, but again, these should be apparent. Write these themes down, as they can act as your guideposts for future email content.
4. Analyze what makes up good (and less-good) responses.
Most software gives you the chance to track how customers responded to your team’s responses. Were you able to solve their problem?
Again, Help Scout is a huge aid here. They provide a Happiness Rating by asking customers if the support they received answered their question. Shameless promotion – over the course of 2020, 95% of our customers have been thrilled with our responses. On a 100-point scale, our customer happiness rating is 92!
In our case, we can simply look at these replies – good, okay, and bad – to seed our content.
By framing the scenarios that your business most commonly faces, you have an understanding of what your support team needs to be trained on. Here’s where Capsim steps in.
5. Start building your customer support Inbox simulation
Our CapsimInbox platform allows authors of any background the ability to write their own stories.
Based on what you’ve already gathered, you should now have a sample scenario for your most common support themes. Additionally, you have potential good, okay, and bad responses for each situation.
Now, you take to CapsimInbox and begin writing. Our interactive platform allows you to write your own story, with different outcomes and ‘branches’ at each step of the way. Handle a client situation poorly in Inbox, and the participant will feel the effects. In contrast, you can help your team understand the value of their good work.
Educate your people!
We know how important purpose is to employee satisfaction—it’s directly tied to their understanding of how their role impacts the company. Use CapsimInbox to educate them and simulate the effects of positive responses on the business. How nice would it be for an employee to see how much they’re contributing to top line revenue growth over time?
Throughout the process, test with your own support team. If this paints the picture you’re looking for, it’s time to take this to training and selection environments.
In my case, I used CapsimInbox as a selection tool for a Product Manager opening. You can do the same for your new client retention and support hires.
Living Our Values
Our support is a testament to our values at Capsim. Front and center, when you walk into our office (whenever we can do that again), you see a statement:
Our success is measured by the success of our customers.
We live this, and we want to help you do the same.
Create an Inbox to train your support team. It’s the easiest way to level up your customer retention. I don’t have to tell you what impact that will make on your business.
Get started with your free CapsimInbox Authoring account today.
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