Quick Start to Using BI in Customer Retention Strategies
Everything needs that special something to grow.
Plants need water and sunshine.
Humans need great food, clean water and abundant plants.
Businesses… They need customers.
As many as they can get.
But unlike plants and humans, they don’t have to constantly replenish themselves. Once a business gets a customer, they could potentially keep them (and continue growing) forever.
According to the book Marketing Metrics, “businesses have a 60 to 70% chance of selling to an existing customer while the probability of selling to a new prospect is only 5% to 20%.”
How do businesses hold on to loyal buyers?
Through customer retention strategies.
But these strategies need to be grounded in data. They can’t be based on intuition or hearsay.
In short:
Customer retention strategies work best when they’re paired with business intelligence (BI).
We list some of the top BI-informed customer retention strategies that help businesses and call centers consistently grow.
Customer Retention Strategies Using Business Intelligence
Predict Customer Behavior
Ultimately, the most important reason to collect and analyze customer information is to know how to understand and predict their behavior.
Data informs business plans, products, marketing strategies, and more.
For call centers, customer data will inform them about how to setup their IVR system, or their ACD system, or if they need agents who speak different languages, or any other number of ways to improve the customer experience.
After all, “A moderate increase in Customer Experience generates an average revenue increase of $823 million over three years for a company with $1 billion in annual revenues,” according to the Temkin Group.
Call centers can also predict when it’s going to be busy (when they’re going to receive a lot of calls), and when it’s going to be slow.
Measure Customer Satisfaction
Measuring customer satisfaction can help call centers better serve customers the next time they call.
And this is critical because “96% of unhappy customers don’t complain, however, 91% of those will simply leave and never come back.” This comes from research conducted by Livework.
To capture this data, call centers usually rely on customer surveys.
One of the most popular is the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT).
At the end of a call with a customer, an automated message can ask them “How satisfied were you with your experience?” and let them say or enter a number between 1 – 3, or 1 – 5, or 1 – 10.
Another way is with the Net Promoter Score.
Similar to the CSAT, call centers can ask customers at the end of their customer service experience, “How likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend or colleague?” Then give the customer options of 1-10.
Regardless of your method, gathering this data will go a long way in helping call centers improve their service and keep more customers.
Identify Key KPIs and Trends
Call center KPIs are crucial to measure optimal performance, long-term.
Specific KPIs that every call center should measure:
- Operational costs
- Agent productivity levels
- Absenteeism
- Schedule adherence
- Handle time
- Active and waiting calls
- Call abandonment
- First call resolution rates
- Call hold time
Each and every one of those KPIs deliver BI insights. As call centers monitor their agents’ behavior and the results in their call center, they’re able to spot problems that need fixing or improving.
And often, these improvements lead to higher rates of customer satisfaction along with increased agent productivity.
Win-win.
Create Customer Profiles
No, call centers don’t have to spy on their customers or collect shady data sources. Call centers who want to retain more customers need to keep files on them, recording all the information customers provide, either through IVR, emails, phone calls, texts or mail.
Here’s some information call centers should keep track of:
- Contact info (name, address, phone number, etc.).
- Demographic information (sex, age, location, and so on).
- Activity log (how often they call, what do they call about, which agent speaks to them).
- Conversations and interactions with agents and managers.
- Notes recorded by agents about their calls with customers.
- And much more.
Create Customer Segments and Group
There are customers call centers don’t need to worry about – the loyal ones. The ones that won’t go anywhere else.
But there are other customers that may be on the fence or ready to jump ship to a competitor.
BI helps call centers identify these “at risk” customers and segment them to a specific group. Then, when a customer from that group calls, they can be routed to an agent specializing in customer retention.
Call centers can also do this regarding location and language. If they have a sizeable amount of customers who speak a specific language or call from a certain place, they may build a call center to serve their needs or stock their current call center with agents who speak that language.
Call centers can do this with as many kinds of segments as they need.
Use Business Intelligence for Customer Retention Strategies Today
It’s clear that BI helps call centers perform optimally, but many managers are probably wondering how to implement BI.
That’s why we put together a guide walking call centers through the major benefits of BI and how to start using it immediately.