It costs a lot less to keep a customer than to try to get a new one. Often, small businesses are so focused on getting new leads and new clients, that they forget to take care of the ones they’ve already obtained.
Just a 5% increase in customer retention can boost profits by between 25% to 95%. This makes retaining your B2B customers an important part of your overall business strategy, and one that is as important as lead generation.
What’s the top customer pet peeve that can cause them to drop a vendor? A survey of B2B decision-makers found it was a lack of responsiveness and speed. This pain point was mentioned twice as often as price.
Here are several best practices you can adopt to help you improve your B2B customer retention rate and boost your profits as a result.
Take a Team-Based Approach to Customer Support
There’s nothing wrong with having a dedicated account rep, but they can’t be the only one that works to make the customer happy. Customers are interacting with multiple people at your business – the support desk that answers the phone, the billing department, etc.
You want your entire team to consider each customer as “their” customer and work together to learn their account needs and know their key contacts.
Having an integrated RMM/PSA system can help because it gives you one place to log every client interaction, from service tickets to follow-up emails. This ensures that everyone has an up-to-date record of client interactions when they talk to that client.
Have an Informative Onboarding Process
If customers are confused about how they are to work with you, how your billing process works, or the way they contact you if there’s an IT issue, they’ll get unhappy pretty quickly.
You want to put together an onboarding process that you use consistently with each customer. This can be done in person or over a webinar. It should include everything a customer needs to know about working with you.
It’s also helpful if you offer to provide refresher onboarding sessions when the company hires new employees that may be a point of contact for you.
Have Enough Staff to Allow a Fast Response
With slow response being the main pain point of B2B customers, being responsive and timely when a client needs IT help is vital to retaining your business customers.
If your staff is spread thin, making it hard to respond to a new ticket in a timely fashion, you need to think about using a combination of:
- Hiring full or part-time staff to help you during busy times
- Automating as many processes as you can in your MSP service workflow to give more time to your technicians
Use Annual Feedback Surveys to Improve Experience
You can’t fix what you don’t know is wrong.
Many customers will leave without telling you exactly why. This can leave you in the dark about problems that you didn’t realize you had which are driving hard-won clients away.
Do an annual feedback survey of your customers to ask them to rate your service and let you know of things you can do better. This is a great way to continually improve your business and to exceed customer expectations.
Use Tools That Make it Easy to Work With You
If working with your company is becoming time-consuming for a B2B client, they’re likely to drop you. For example, if the accounting department has to call every month to work out problems on their invoices, they’ll likely come to feel that working with you is too problematic.
It’s helpful to have your own IT systems in place that make working with you seamless for your clients. It should be easy for clients to do everything from sending you an urgent IT service ticket to paying their monthly invoice.
Check-In With Customers Regularly
Customers are used to getting lots of attention from a service provider when they’re still leads, and that company is trying to earn their business. But once they become a customer, they often rarely hear from their service provider unless there is an issue.
Make sure to check in with your customers regularly and call them just to “see how things are going.” They’ll be much less likely to leave because you take such good care of them.
Learn From Those That Leave
While not all customers will take the time to tell you why they are dropping their services, you should still try to find out. Use an exit survey asking what you could’ve done better. Or, even better, call to ask their reason for leaving.
Why a customer decided to stop working with you is important information that can help you improve your customer experience, and possibly win that client back in the future.
Use an RMM/PSA Platform That Makes it Easy to Work With Your Business
The Syncro RMM/PSA platform is designed to be easy for MSPs and easy for their customers!
Contact us today to schedule a free demo and a 30-day free trial. Call 856-579-6276 or start your trial online.
[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://syncromsp.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Caitlin_Headshot.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Caitlin Good is the Content Marketing Manager at Syncro with more than 10 years of experience in the technology and eCommerce industries.[/author_info] [/author]
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This document is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as legal advice. Syncro makes no warranty, expressed nor implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any information contained herein.
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