Customers have more options than ever. If anything about your services is lacking, they won’t hesitate to go elsewhere. With just a little effort, they can find a dozen other businesses offering the same thing.
The worst part?
They usually leave without communication. You have no idea why they were unhappy, and you missed the opportunity to understand and address their concerns.
That’s why it’s essential to be proactive. Don’t wait for customers to reach out with questions! Knowing how to follow up with a customer helps you improve their experience, exceed their expectations, and retain their business.
Setting Goals To Guide Your Customer Follow-Up Strategy
Size and scale no longer predetermine market share. Small businesses can easily grow based on the quality of services they offer. Customer engagement and proactive communication contribute to high retention rates and reduced churn.
In other words, your interactions with a buyer shouldn’t end after they’ve purchased your product. Conversion marks the beginning of the relationship-building process, and you need to take the lead on that.
To give yourself the best odds for success, you also have to know what you’re trying to accomplish. So here are some goals to keep in mind as you decide when and how to follow up with a customer.
Recover Lost Sales and Repair Reputation Damage
Whenever possible, customers will choose brands that provide them with a positive experience. On the flip side, a single negative experience can cost your business thousands. Lifelong customers often pack up and walk away due to a single poor interaction.
This affects more than just those customers. It also impacts your business’ reputation. Negative feedback plastered across social media deters potential leads from doing business with you.
People are looking for a quality brand experience. But most of them aren’t going to ask you for that. They simply expect it, and leave when they don’t receive it.
The only way to know if you’re offering the kind of experience that keeps buyers around or drives them away is to communicate with them regularly. Uncovering issues before they become deal-breakers (and result in negative word of mouth) requires a consistent focus on the customer’s long-term needs.
Gather Customer Performance Insights
Unsolicited feedback (the kind you find through reviews posted to Facebook or Google) is often weighted in the extreme negative or positive direction. It also tends to be short on useful, actionable details.
Conducting your own customer follow-ups provides much better performance insights. Staying in communication with buyers helps you develop a stronger product. It also helps you provide a higher-quality experience for everyone, and prevent other customers from leaving.
With rich qualitative and quantitative feedback, you can implement proactive measures that:
- Simplify UX
- Reduce touchpoints required for the customer to complete an action
- Provide better customer support
- Automate internal and external processes
- Establish learning tools and resources
Turn One-Time Buyers into Loyal Advocates
Keeping customers happy enough to stick around is a great start. But for your business to really grow, you’ll want to transform at least some of those buyers into cheerleaders.
The road to long-term loyalty and genuine advocacy is built on proactive communication and a seamless customer experience. If people feel valued and supported, they’re more likely to remember your business and share their experiences with it. A customer advocate is an authentic voice who can publicize your services better than any advertisement.
And what’s the best way to make your customers feel valued? Talk to them! Check in, ask about their experiences, invite them to ask for help, and so on. Relationships are two-sided things, and you have to hold up your end if you want buyers to see you as more than just an end to a means.
How To Follow Up with a Customer (4 Strategies for Proactive Communication)
So you know that you want to communicate, and you know what your goals are. The next step is to decide exactly how to follow up with a customer, in a way that adds value and increases the odds of retention.
Every business is unique, and your overall approach has to cater to your audiences’ needs and preferences. These four follow-up strategies are a great place to start and are relevant for nearly any SMB. You can use them as a starting point, and customize the details to reflect your goals.
Strategy #1: Educate Customers on Features They Aren’t Using
Let’s say you offer custom software on a subscription basis. A new customer gets through onboarding without issue, and starts using your product on a regular basis.
However, once they understand the basics, they stop ‘exploring’ the product. They’re busy – aren’t we all! – and they assume that what they see at first glance is all there is.
Before too long, the customer may feel like the software doesn’t offer all the tools they need, and start looking at competitors. But the features they want are right there, waiting to be discovered.
Proactive follow-ups prevent this type of problem. You can’t assume your customers are going to dig through every menu screen and documentation article to learn the full extent of your product’s functionality.
Sometimes, you need to point them in the right direction. You can flag customers who aren’t using certain features – features you know are key to making the most of your product. Then you can send those customers proactive communication in the form of an offer for personalized onboarding, a handy set of links to key resources, or a video tutorial.
If you need help finding out which customers aren’t using key functionality, you can dig into the data using a tool like Usermaven. This platform tracks how many unique users interact with specific features, and helps you understand their overall workflows.
Soliciting feedback from your customers via surveys can also tell you what features are underutilized. Occasional follow-ups to your entire customer base highlighting a specific feature or use case provides education for those who need it.
And for those who don’t, the follow-up still demonstrates your commitment to customers. It may even inspire them to dig around for what options they might have missed.
Just make sure that you have plenty of educational resources to point users towards. For best effect, you can collect everything into a self-service knowledge base:
Building up a library of FAQs, tutorial articles, and videos helps customers find answers to their questions autonomously. And it also makes follow-ups much easier.
You can direct users to valuable information that’s relevant right now, and remind them of the resources that are available 24/7. That’s why our customer support helpdesk, Groove, lets you set up a comprehensive knowledge base quickly and easily.
Strategy #2: Offer Relevant Upsells and Cross-Sells
Learning how to effectively upsell and cross-sell is essential. When done right, it’s a way of providing additional value to customers and driving retention while increasing lifetime value.
When done poorly, however, it can drive buyers away. This is a type of follow-up best sent occasionally, and best targeted at users you know are reasonably happy (via strong customer satisfaction scores or recent positive communications).
Upselling encourages existing customers to upgrade their product or subscription plan. This might get them advanced features, improved functionality, or more resources.
On the other hand, cross-selling encourages existing customers to purchase additional services or products. “People like you also bought” sections on product landing pages are an example of passive cross-selling:
Demonstrating Added Value To Successfully Upsell or Cross-Sell
When used in a proactive way, upsells and cross-sells transition one-time buyers into long-term customers. The key is to make it clear how the buyer will benefit – what new value or utility are they getting?
For upselling, this means showing users the added benefits of the upgraded plan. You can address potential needs that might not be met on the current tier. You might even offer a trial version of the higher-level functionality.
As for cross-selling, what’s most important is to offer products or services that compliment what the customer is already using. Segmentation is crucial, as you don’t want your audience to feel like they’re receiving a generic advertisement.
Let’s say you sell helpdesk software (like we do!). You also offer a CRM product that integrates directly into that helpdesk for lead nurturing.
If the customer purchases both, they get an annual discount and a better user experience. Plus, as long as the two products work together seamlessly, the customer is now invested in your ecosystem of products, rather than a single offering.
When deciding how to follow up with a customer via upselling or cross-selling, you might try:
- Checking in with a growing account. As the business grows, you want to demonstrate that you can scale with them. This might mean letting them know about your monthly plans with additional seats or users, or an enterprise-focused plan with more automation features.
- Showing the customer how they “win”. If you can demonstrate added value, you’ll signal how an upsell can help their business. One way to do that is to share case studies of real customers who have benefited from premium functionality or a complementary product.
- Encouraging satisfied customers to switch from monthly to annual subscriptions. Not only does this save the customer some money, but it encourages a longer-term commitment at a strategic point in the relationship.
- Making the process of upgrading effortless. Direct customers to a landing page or self-service resource where they can compare products, features, and plans. Minimize touchpoints, and let them upgrade in as few clicks as possible.
Strategy #3: Provide High-Risk Customers with Additional Support
‘High risk’ can be a phrase associated with fraudulent customers. But here, high risk means the customers who are most likely to churn. Identifying and following up with these buyers should be a top priority.
There are a number of ways to conduct a churn analysis. Through that analysis, you can determine which of your customers are most likely to leave, and provide them with additional support.
One major cause of churn is an insufficient onboarding process. The first conversion is a major milestone in the lifecycle of the customer. If there are any roadblocks that might prevent their success with your product, you’ll need to address those promptly.
Examples include:
- They don’t understand how to set up or use your product effectively.
- They find the product difficult to navigate.
- They can’t find or access features that provide value.
- They’re unable to locate the resources they need to learn the product.
For best results, we’d recommend setting up a clear onboarding process for your customers. A familiar and effective way to do that is via a series of welcome emails.
You can plan follow-ups that will trigger when a new customer comes onboard. One or more prompt (but spaced) emails will provide them with key information, point them towards important resources, let them know how to get help, and showcase examples of the product in action.
If you’re using a support helpdesk, you might even be able to automate those messages. With Groove, for example, you can create templates that can be quickly customized and sent out to newcomers:
After that initial period, keep an eye out for other ‘risky’ situations. This may involve some time and analysis. Keep track of your churn rate and individual churned customers, and identify the most common interactions that result in cancelled subscriptions or a drop in purchases.
On the global level, this might include:
- Product launches, updates, and other changes, when customers are likely to experience technical issues or be confused by a new interface
- Pricing tweaks or changes to what customers receive on their plans
- Specific seasonal periods when customers are less likely to use your product or are trying to tighten their budgets
And on the individual level, you might watch for:
- Multiple support conversations in a short period of time, or a single support interaction that wasn’t resolved to the customer’s satisfaction
- Inactive accounts – customers who haven’t used your product or made a new purchase in a while
- Downgrades – it’s not a great sign when a user who’s been on the $30 per month plan for two years suddenly switches to the basic $10 per month plan
You can set up triggers so follow-ups are sent at these important points. Just remember that for those messages to be effective, they should be specific.
Instead of a generic ‘do you have any questions’, address their likely concerns or frustrations directly and provide solutions. If you’re not sure why a high-risk scenario is causing churn, you can get to the bottom of the mystery via tracking support metrics, performing exit surveys, experimenting with usability testing, and soliciting direct customer feedback.
Strategy #4: Maintain an Active Mailing List
Email marketing is most often discussed as a way to convert leads. And it’s certainly effective for that purpose. However, your email list is just as useful for nurturing your existing customers and keeping them around.
First and foremost, be sure to invite all new buyers to subscribe. This can be a part of your initial onboarding follow-up process. For bonus points, use segmentation to send this particular message only to customers who haven’t yet subscribed.
Next, plan out campaigns specifically designed for the needs of existing customers. These serve as periodic follow-ups and ways to provide added value. Plus, they can be combined with some of the strategies we’ve discussed, such as educating users on important features.
Whatever your plan is, the following are crucial:
- Provide real value in your emails. The occasional promotion is fine. But if you’re using email marketing as a follow-up and relationship-building strategy, the focus should be on offering useful information and high-quality content.
- Space your messages carefully. No one likes to be bombarded with emails, even if they are interesting. Strike a balance between staying in touch and not over-communicating.
- Make it easy to unsubscribe (and don’t subscribe customers who haven’t chosen to opt in). Communication isn’t valuable if it’s one-way. Even happy customers may prefer not to receive these messages – you can still follow up with them in other ways.
It’s also a good idea to track unsubscribed readers and unopened emails. This tells you if your emails are an effective or unwelcome follow-up method. It’s also another way of identifying high-risk customers who might benefit from more personalized and targeted outreach.
Most email marketing tools make it easy to track that information. If you prefer to keep everything in one place and send these follow-ups via your support helpdesk, Groove offers an email tracking feature.
You can even create a smart folder where emails with an “unread” status are collected, via the following process:
- Click on Settings
- Select Smart Folders from the left hand column
- Click on “Create smart folder” in the top right-hand corner
- Select “Conversations that match ALL of the filters set below”
- Select “Status is Unread”
- Hit “Create”
This lets you track anyone on your mailing list who hasn’t read your emails, so you can target them with alternative follow-up strategies.
Making Follow-Ups a Part of Your Overall Customer Experience Strategy
Any subpar interaction with your business, products, or services can cause abandonment. It’s vital to have a comprehensive strategy in place for optimizing every part of the customer experience.
Regular and targeted follow-ups are an important part of that strategy. Many customers won’t communicate concerns before they bounce. The onus falls on your business to look for warning signs and proactively reach out.
However, maximizing the CX also means providing top-quality support. For that, Groove helps you manage customer communications – both proactive and reactive – across all channels. Sign up for a free trial and experience the difference!