Customer Retention Strategy – Employee Business Referrals

When it comes to Customer Retention strategy for any company, the following clicks our mind:

Reduction in Customer Churn Rate
Cross-selling to engage the customer
Sell and sell again (its easy to sell again than selling to new customer)
Extraordinary Customer Service

But the scenario in hand is a bit different, here we are talking about business acquired by referral by a new recruit, lets say your new sales person who heads the sales department or is managing that section of your business single-handedly. He is managing the operations, sales, marketing (of a specific product) etc.

This employee of yours can be the ex-employee of your competitor, your business rival and now HIM in your team with all the customers once stood with your competitor are at your side now. Who changed the supplier for no solid reason but convinced by the switching employee to change the supplier/ service provider.

In such case all your strategies are of no use, your customer life time value just looks you in the eyes and make fun of your business strategy and your weak planning, decision making and the way you tackled your customers and that particular employee who brought considerable business. revenue.

Opportunity Creation does not require any time frame for both of you before its too late. For employee to take all business with him for a better pay-scale or attractive incentive and for you to mitigate such possibility and stay on track with the following few things, which can be termed as “Customer Ownership”: –

A Comparison of your revenue/ sales before and after induction of the referral business employee
Customer Wise Life Time Value before and after induction of the referral business
Variance analysis of Customer Life Time Value before and after induction of the referral business employee
CRM’s can do the trick in gathering data of the lead/ sales opportunity generation source to identify the leads/ customers generated through Referral and Marketing Activities
Plan frequent communication email to the customers to give them feel of ownership of supply of products/ services they’re receiving
Extraordinary Customer Service by introducing your fully dedicated Customer Services Representative who is responsible for Company’s excellence milestones and receiving complaints happily
Zero / minimum involvement of sales person/ section head in after sales services
Take Complaints as a gift whenever received and feel happy in receiving.
Of course Magic Moments are the cure surprises to customers in form of gifts like cinema tickets, dinner vouchers, indoor/ outdoor activities vouchers
Engage the customer in Surveys and Questionnaire on periodic basis