Acquiring customers is only half of the battle. If your company wants to truly succeed you need to retain customers. Keeping your customers and turning first-time customers into long term partnerships is a key success factor. Keeping customers can be difficult, but it can also be lucrative. And, once you get to know a customer well enough, you should be able to provide them with better services and predict their needs.

It’s no secret that customer acquisition costs are on the rise, and you need to do what it takes to keep your current customer base happy and satisfied with your product and service offerings.

Here are 5 effective ways to retain customers you fought hard to get:

1. Be the expert

Today, you need to offer more than just products and services if you want to keep your customers coming back. With many companies becoming more dependent on outside service providers to operate, there is a great opportunity to become a go-to expert for your customer. Become a trusted advisor, and be the source of knowledge and information they need.

2. Establish a trusting relationship

Trust matters. People are more willing to do business with you if they can trust you. They will be even more willing to work with you long term if you put the effort into developing a strong business relationship. You can do this by finding connection points, shared values, and prove to them you are interested in helping them succeed.

3. Be proactive with service offerings

Often times, keeping your customers is about being proactive and looking for ways to prevent issues from occurring. Too many companies wait for issues to arise to offer solutions. But, if you can offer solutions that prevent problems in the first place, you will be one step ahead, and your customers will appreciate you for it.

4. Go above and beyond to retain customers

One of the most basic customer service principles, but it works. To keep your customers, you have to be willing to go above and beyond when required. Don’t just do the minimum. Always be on the lookout for ways to make things easier and ways to help your customers prevent issues from arising.

5. Listen and ask for feedback

Listening to and understanding your customers’ business needs on a deeper level is one of the simplest and most effective ways to build loyalty. All you need to do is ask for feedback and use it to customize your offerings to meet their unique needs. There are many ways to solicit feedback. Choose the method that makes the most sense for you and your customers.

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