Customer Retention With Dynamics 365 – Five Ways to Make it Work6 min read

Here’s something to bear in mind when you’re thinking about ways to acquire new customers: retaining a current customer by nurturing their loyalty can be less expensive and more profitable.

As a rule, customers generate increasing profits each year they stay with a company. This means a small increase in retention can lead to big returns.

For example, in financial services, a 5% increase in customer retention produces more than a 25% increase in profit, according to a famous study by Bain & Company.

The reason for this is pretty straightforward. More resources and energy are needed to identify target customer groups and to take them on that journey ­- from a ‘cold’ prospect to a buyer. This is the same in B2B and B2C settings.

One sound way to ensure your customers feel happy and listened to – and remain loyal to your products and services ­- is to use a good customer relationship management (CRM) system, such as Microsoft’s Dynamics 365.

Here are some ways a CRM can support your customer retention efforts.

Find out why your customers love you – and do more of it!

If you’re not gathering data on why your customers are buying your products and/or services, you could be missing out on key insights that will help you grow! So ask yourself how you are currently collecting data insights. How did your customer first hear about you? What were the contact points that led up to them buying from you and how well did those interactions work? What did you learn from their first, second or third purchase? More importantly, is the data you’re gathering being fed into your CRM system? A clear single view of how customers are interacting with you, with systems like Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 for Marketing, will help you sculpt a more profitable journey. Not only that but you’ll be able to give your customers more of what they love, undoubtably leading to increased brand loyalty and improved customer retention with Dynamics 365 – win win!

Make it easy for customers to contact you

Are your customers able to make enquiries on their favourite social media channels? Can they arrange a call-back if they’ve phoned you and can’t get through? How many clicks do they need to navigate to get what they want from your website? In an online and increasingly autonomous world, modern customers want as few hoops to jump through as possible to get what they want – a good CRM enables you to view all these touch points in one place and make incremental improvements so you become increasingly available to your customers.

Additionally, within your CRM, you can store all your notes, call logs and email correspondence between each customer on their contact, making for a smoother transaction if they do reach out. In terms of customer retention, this could be key. There’s nothing worse than having to repeat your problems over and over again to different members of the customer service team.

Keep an eye on the less engaged

Use your data to find out who isn’t engaged and could be at risk of lapsing. Track customers who aren’t opening or clicking on your emails, visiting your website, or looking at your videos. Your customer data isn’t meant to be just stored – you need to USE it. Is your CRM servicing your needs? A good sales CRM, like Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales, will be able to provide you with smart insights into customer behaviour with easy and accurate reporting. With these insights you can create an informed plan of action for you to reach out to your less engaged customers with a targeted campaign to reduce the risk of losing their loyalty. Part of your action plan could be to send scheduled emails with more relevant information or special offers. That way you stay at the forefront of your customers mind and they are reminded of your value.

Assess and improve your customer service performance

Dynamics 365 allows you to gather customer feedback scores by sending survey forms in an automated email after you’ve dealt with an issue. The results will help you tailor your service so it gets better with each case. With Power BI, you can identify, review and nail recurring issues, whether they relate to the time taken to resolve problems, the language used in the interaction, the thoroughness of resolution or any other issue the survey throws up.

If your customer is satisfied and feels that their opinion matters – because of your efforts at customer retention with Dynamics 365 – they’ll be far more likely to return.

Get feedback from lapsed customers

Sometimes customers go to competitors, no matter what you do. As long as you’re learning from each experience then it doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Reach out to your lapsed customers and ask for feedback. You can automate this process with a good CRM by, for example, sending a pre-prepared email with an offer to customers who haven’t returned to your website for a while. The insights you gather can be used to improve your products offerings or services, and you never know, this proactive step may encourage them to re-join in the future.

The number one reason for customers taking their business elsewhere? 

Simple: it’s because they believe that you don’t care about them. This is one of those rare situations when the customer needs to be proven wrong!

So, when it comes to improving customer retention, showing your customers you care is what’s most important and with a CRM like Dynamics 365, it can not only be easier than you think, but it can be done quicker and more efficiently. You don’t need to lose one more customer if you don’t want to.

At Cloud9 Insight we’re able to help you understand the areas in which you are succeeding, and the ones where you may need to pay a little more attention. With an in-depth look at your business processes, we can identify not only your pain points but also missed opportunities. 

Perhaps your customer service team is magnificent but only with known customers or maybe your mailing lists aren’t updated and you’re not checking in with the right customers.

Once you fix issues like these, and your customer knows you care, they will develop brand loyalty.

You want your customers to feel an allegiance to you, you might think this can only be possible for big brands like the commitment of Levi jeans wearers or Coca Cola drinkers but as a specialist in the SMB space we can assure you this isn’t the case.

If you’re doing all of the above, monitoring buying habits, being easily contactable, looking after your less engaged customers and learning from your mistakes there’s no reason why you can’t improve your overall brand loyalty, and in turn, your customer retention.

A final word…

Please contact us to discuss your customer retention needs with one of our Dynamics 365 experts.