6 Do’s and Don’ts for a successful customer lifecycle management

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For any business to stay ahead in the competition, the need to create a delightful customer lifecycle journey cannot be underestimated. Brands have to gather enormous data to analyze the buying trends and customer behaviour at different stages of their lifecycle.

This Big data is a goldmine of information as it allows businesses to proactively communicate with customers and offer a personalized and customized solution. It is easier and cheaper to maintain an existing customer base rather than hunting for new customers.

Businesses need to provide more value for money to customers. Every customer wants ease of buying. To ensure this, it is indispensable to know your customers more closely and personalize their interaction throughout their journey.

Do’s for a successful customer lifecycle management

Following are some of the methods that businesses can adopt for successful lifecycle management:

#1. Engage in effective traffic sources

Engaging in effective and new traffic sources is one of the essential parts of a customer lifecycle. In today’s digital world, anything can be done with a single touchpoint for the brand to connect with its customers and on a more personal level.

If a brand has effective, active, and many traffic sources, it will easily stay in the cut-throat business for a longer run. Some effective traffic sources that brands can consider can be social media advertising, direct marketing, etc.

#2. Self-service

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Customer self-service tools are becoming increasingly popular these days as customers want instant resolution of their primary and straightforward issues. These tools are populated with a set of FAQs and are menu-driven for solving a variety of customer concerns.

It has become more responsive as brands keep updating them in the light of knowledge gained through interaction with customers and their feedback. These are extremely helpful in managing the customer relationship lifecycle.

#3. Automation in customer service

Customer service automation tools are based on AI and ML, where they can receive both voice and text input. The data is received by a natural language processor (NLP), which decodes it into machine language. Then its AI-enabled processor searches for keywords and patterns to draft a proper response to the user. If it can’t provide any desired solution, it will connect the user to a customer care executive.

#4. Omni-channel customer support

To enhance the ease of their business experience for the customer, the brand needs to have omnichannel customer support. It is different from multi-channel customer support, where there are various channels of communication available for the customer.

All the channels work in silos and do not know what is happening in other channels of communication. As a result, customers have to repeat everything whenever they call the brand through different channels.

 

However, if a brand has omnichannel customer support, the customer has a seamless experience when communicating with the brand across different touchpoints.

#5. Addition of service agreements

During online purchase from brands, sometimes there may be products which are not eligible for repairs or replacement if there are any issues concerning the quality. At that time, the customer gets in financial distress as they cannot seek redressal for their issue.

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Here, the particular brand can point out to the customer that, as against other brands, they are providing a warranty for repairs and replacement in case of product failure. As a result, customers will develop a sense of trust in that brand.

#6. Identify satisfied customers

For brands to have a positive customer lifecycle management, they need to identify those at risk, not satisfied with the brand. Along with these, brands also need to identify customers that are highly satisfied with their brand.

This can be achieved through NPS, that is, Net Promoter Score. It measures a customer’s loyalty & satisfaction towards the brand and its services on a scale of 0 to 10. The higher the score is, the better it is for the brand.

Once a brand identifies such customers, they can then determine their areas of improvement, where their services need to be enhanced or maintained with the feedback obtained.

Don’ts for a successful customer lifecycle management

Following are some of the methods that businesses should avoid for successful lifecycle management:

#1. Don’t rely on a single traffic source

Brands need to avoid relying on single traffic sources as it will only affect their business in the long run. For instance, just having an official brand website is not enough. The brand needs to have more than that to generate enough traffic.

A brand needs to have more than one active traffic source in hand to generate more traffic, like advertising their products through social media, having their product advertisements printed in newspapers or blogs. There’s also the option for direct marketing that relies on direct communication rather than going through a third party.’

#2. Don’t underestimate the role of over-delivering

Once a customer becomes interested in a brand and its products, it is the brand’s responsibility to show their customers why they are worthy enough. Unfortunately, many brands underestimate the role of over-delivering to their customers, giving an open opportunity to their competitors.

Great Customer Service Culture
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Brands need to realize that if they over-deliver to their customers with various exclusive offers, discounts, memberships, etc., it will reap them some significant benefits in the long run.

#3. Don’t over engage with customers

Sometimes, brands inform their customers about their offers or memberships via telephone calls or emails, or social media regularly. As a result, chances become high of such customers moving to another brand. It happens when brands over engage with their customers and not realizing their customer’s needs.

If the customers are not interested in a particular offer or deal at that time and keep on receiving the calls about such from the brand, they’ll quickly become irritated. Similarly with regular check-in, after making a purchase, if the brand keeps trying to get in touch with the customer, they will soon get annoyed.

In such cases, brands need to respect and realize that their customers have their commitments and other prior engagements. They need to find the right balance and time to contact their customers.

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#4. Avoid procrastination

Procrastination is an evil practice when it comes to shaping customer journeys. When a brand procrastinates, they only sabotage themselves, which in the end, affects their reputation. Procrastination not only involves a brand’s reputation but also dramatically affects their relationships with the customers.

For instance, it is not responding to the customer’s queries in a time, not delivering the order on time, making excuses for all the mistakes. All this eventually affects and ruins the relationship between the brand and the customer.

Procrastination dampers a brand’s efforts, and the only solution for it is to overcome it. First, a brand needs to recognize that they are procrastinating, get themselves organized, find a method, or overcome it to get their customer’s trust.

#5. Don’t forget to take care of leads

Many brands commit the mistake of nurturing their existing leads. To capture more new customers, they forget about their existing ones. When this happens, those customers eventually move up to another brand which affects the customer relationship cycle.

Brands can provide various offers, personalized services, memberships, etc., to their existing customers instead of acquiring new ones to prevent this from happening.

#6. Non-use of same touchpoints between brand and customer

In today’s digital world, when experiencing any issue with a brand’s product or service, many customers refer to platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., to express their issues.

However, suppose the brand decides to schedule a call or send an email to the customer to respond to their complaints. In that case, the customer will eventually look somewhere else. Chances become high that when such customers look somewhere else to solve their queries, they may turn to the brand’s competitors.

Brands need to realize that if they have many channels or sources through which they communicate with their customers, they need to be active and present in all of them.

Takeaways

For any business to survive and stay ahead in the competition, it can’t manage the customer lifecycle without proactively reaching out to its customers and offering them solutions that resonate with the customer’s desires and aspirations.

Brands should know the pulse of what their customer wants and when they want it. If a brand can fulfil a customer’s desires where they get more value for money, then only they will remain loyal to the brand.

Pratik Salia
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