Customer retention comes down to managing these key points

A ton of research has been conducted over the years on how businesses can best develop relationships with their customers. Most companies aim to keep as many of their customers happy for as long as possible while minimizing churn or customer turnover. Some companies may even have lofty goals like winning customers for life.

But what levers can you pull to help increase your customer retention rate? In short, there are three key elements to focus on:

1. Setting expectations and beating them.

2. Ensuring your product/service is competitive.

3. Building an emotional relationship with your customer.

Let's discuss what I mean by each of these.

Setting Expectations

Nothing can upset a new customer more than missing their expectationssomehow. If they expect one thing--and you deliver something else--things can get ugly in a hurry. Research shows that a customer's experience in their first 90 days will drive whether they remain a customer over the long haul.

The same principle applies to new employees. I remember working for a company earlier in my career, and within just a few weeks, I knew I wasn't a good fit for the company's culture. Worse, many of the expectations they set for me around the kind of work I would be doing were inflated. It just wasn't what I expected. I eventually left for another job because I could never shake that early experience and feeling that I was a mismatch between the company and the expectations they set for me.

On the other hand, intelligent companies learn how to set expectations for their customers--and even beat them. Think about Disney. There's almost always a crowd when you go to their theme parks. So, when you want to go on one of their rides, you immediately see the signs telling you the wait is "45 minutes from here" or something. They're setting the expectation for you on how long you will have to wait. But the truth is that Disney expects that you might only stand in line for 25 minutes at that point. In other words, you'll get through the line far faster than you were expecting--so you feel good about the experience. So even though you still had to stand in line for almost half an hour, Disney has found a way to delight you as a customer rather than disappoint you.

Competitive Offerings

While it might seem obvious, you can't overlook that if you want to keep your customers happy, you need to ensure that your products and services are competitive with the market. Are you offering similar or better options at an equal or lower price than your competition?

But there's more to keeping customers around than new bells and whistles. There's also the strategy of making your products and services more "sticky" by building barriers to exit them. That might mean that they are required to make significant investments in time or money upfront, which will make it more painful for them to switch to a competitor. You don't want to make any of these too onerous. Customers hate it when companies make it too hard to cancel something. But you can find ways to make it easier for them to stay than leave.

Building Relationships

As an engineer, I sometimes find it hard to understand the emotional attachments some people build with certain companies and brands. But it happens all the time, and it's a powerful force for those companies who can create these kinds of relationships with their customers. When you can do this, you build loyalty with people beyond features--which goes a long way toward winning customers for life.

That means you should be intentional in building these kinds of relationships with your customers. Suppose your front-line line salespeople are answering calls, for instance. In that case, you might invest in training to help them understand that their goal should be to build relationships with the people on the other end of the line more than merely trying to solve a problem or close a transaction. It's all about making those sticky human-to-human connections.

Customers For Life

If the long-term value of your business hinges on your ability to attract and retain customers for the long haul, whether you are B2C or B2B, there are three areas you can invest in to help you reach your goals: think about setting, and beating, customer expectations; build competitive ad sticky products and services, and think about how you can make those emotional ties and relationships with customers than helps ensure they will stick around for the long haul.

Inc