3 Easy Steps to Increase Customer Retention (and Profits)
Feb 27, 2023
Tax season. Anyone else rejoicing? Insert my last few nights have been sitting at the computer reconciling QuickBooks. My husband is our bookkeeper right now, but let me tell you if you read last week's blog post, that is next on our list to outsource!
But here is a fun fact: I had this goal last year to be able to pay all our expenses (at least the predictable ones) at the beginning of the year.
Think subscriptions. Canva. Kajabi. Quickbooks. Initially, we designed our membership to make enough profit to cover our expenses to meet this goal. Which we did. So everything past January 20th of this year is profit unless we hire more people *Hint.* We probably will. Or add new products. Which *hint* we probably will do that, too. That being said, the focus on profit in the membership model really allowed me to dig deep into my corporate background and work on customer retention. Why?
Want to make more money?
It costs seven times more to attract a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. So it is truly valuable to focus on the customers you have first, rather than jump into creating 7 streams of income. The other data I love to talk about is the 80/20 rule, which is that 80% of your income will come from 20% of your customers or audience. We could do a whole post on this and in fact, I have a whole masterclass coming up on this topic alone in the Crush the Rush Club.
Easy Steps to Improve Your Customer Experience
There are EASY steps you can take to increase your customer experience which in turn increases your profit. I am going to use our Crush the Rush Club membership as an example but it truly applies to everything.
Here's a breakdown of how we did it. You can apply this to your membership or any product or service you offer.
1. Have a clear roadmap to get started and the next steps based on the level of business you are at.
What does this mean? When someone signs up, what happens? How do they know where to go? What to do? How to use the tools you provided? This can be as simple as a quick video tutorial or emails that help them along. We have done a few things to make sure you get the most out of the club membership:
- Right after you sign-up the thank you page has a video from me telling you exactly what to do next.
- If you miss the video, it is sitting in your inbox with instructions.
- We then layered in a 90-day checklist which is printable and tells you exactly what to do first AND
- Created a quiz, which based on the results, personalizes the content in the membership for you
- And to make it personal, we always introduce our new members inside our group and remind you to come to the live events with a personalized calendar.
It sounds like a lot, but if your clients get overwhelmed, they will stop taking action and go silent. You want them to see results, so this ensures they get a great start. Other examples would be if you had a course, send a welcome sequence or a few emails to check in on them and provide extra support. Or if you have a product, like our small business planner, help your client understand how to use it over a period of time.
Jeff Bezos once said "We like to think of inviting people to use Amazon like inviting them to a party. We are the hosts and every day it is our job to make every aspect of their customer experience better. What happens when you go to someone's house for a party? They take your coat. Offer you a drink. Maybe give you a tour of the house or kitchen. This is what you are doing when someone signs up to work with you. Give them the lay of the land."
2. Keep Things Streamlined
The second thing we did was streamlined everything into one platform. We use the Kajabi membership app but also their new community circle. Everything is available in one place. On the go. On your phone. As a bonus, we added a private podcast just for members with all our masterclasses. You want it to be an easy yes to access all the things. But also, what is working now when it comes to consumption? No one wants to watch hour-long courses. So we made ours short and put them in a podcast, or if you like video you can watch it on an app on the go.
Going back to the party analogy, how are you making it easy for people to enjoy what you are providing? As an example, you wouldn't have your food on three different levels of your house. It is all in the kitchen where it is easily accessible.
And remember, what comes easy to you, doesn't come easy to others. Simplify everything.
Do you love these tips? Take the Productivity Personality Quiz to get a Netflix-style binge-worthy resource list to help you find your focus and is customized to you! Take the quiz here.
3. Connection always wins.
You can have the best content in the world, but unless your customers feel a connection with you they will not purchase or implement. Steve Jobs once said. "Technology is nothing. What's important is that you have faith in people. That they are basically good and smart and if you give them the tools, they will do wonderful things with them." How do you do this?
Layer in LIVE interaction. Inside our Club membership, we went from one Q&A call a month to three: two Q&A calls and one co-working session. We also layered in a Content Planning Session and a Monthly Planning Party (which features a quarterly plan template and even what to work on next week). So technically there are FIVE opportunities a month to interact live, one every single week. No one wants to build their business alone.
Create ways to build connection.
Connection can also be built online, we do this through our App. In the past quarter inside the membership, we introduced "Circles". If you are a tester of our app, you know how fun these are. We have a podcast circle, an Instagram circle, and a Q&A circle. All ways to connect. If you want to be on a podcast or are a podcast host, simply ask a question in the podcast circle. Everything is real time, giving you instant connection. But also, because we have a global audience, you can connect whenever works for you.
To summarize, it really comes down to customer experience. Do your clients and customers know what to do when they start? Are you making it easy for them to find all the tools and resources? And how are you building connection with them?
Want to Learn More?
If you liked this post, I also share how we developed ours to bring in 50K of passive income last year and in this post chat about how and why we built it.
I'll leave you with my biggest lesson learned: Design what you want.
Whether it's a product, service, course, or whatever, it doesn't matter what others are doing. Design what you would want to use including how you would use it. You are your best customer. You most likely are attracting people to work with you where you were 2-3 years ago or a phase in your life where you developed your expertise. Don't be afraid to create what makes sense. Business can be that simple.
Looking for more on this topic and your High-Level Action items? Check out the Strategy Lab in the Crush the Rush Club!
