100% Customer Retention – Masterclass

Batenborch International frequently organizes events that allow professionals to learn with and from each other. Last week, we connected various Commercial Directors and General Managers in a Masterclass on how to measure customer satisfaction to guarantee 100% retention in collaboration with Hovingh & Partners.

Hovingh & Partners Masterclass

Last Friday, the 13th of May, we welcomed a small group of senior executives from various industry, ICT, services and FMCG environments to our offices. Jordi van Berkum, Partner at Hovingh & Partners, led the session on how to measure customer satisfaction to guarantee 100% retention. Hovingh & Partners is a renowned sales and negotiation consultancy, offering training, coaching and implementation of the world’s best methods. Jordi himself has a background leading (international) sales teams at Tech Data and Clariant.

Short term price increase

One of the current main trends, in several industries, is short term price increase. As a consequence, focus from a sales perspective should be even more on relationship than on price. Transparency is key. The price increase should be explained to the customer before the actual implementation of the price increase, at all times. In this way, the customer understands where the increase is coming from which reduces the chance of a possible first strong emotional reaction. As emotion works five times faster than ratio, it is important to justify such a decision.

“Trust is worth so much more than price.”

Treat others like you want to be treated yourself?

Or not? Actually, you should treat others like they want to be treated themselves. As we also described in the article on the 29th of April, the DISC model provides many interesting insights about personal preferences. By estimating your customer’s DISC profile, you can adapt your communication style and connect more easily with your customer.

Measure customer satisfaction

Net Promotor Score (NPS) is a popular market research metric used to measure customer satisfaction in general. A one-question survey can be sent once a year to each customer. Response will definitely increase if you ask your customer personally to help you by giving his/her feedback. Also, contacting your customer personally to ask an explanation behind the NPS and to get more qualitative information will help you to actually improve your performance and increase customer retention. Receiving an NPS from each Decision Making Unit (DMU) helps you to be able to process feedback more specifically. Finally, it is important for your customer to feel listened to. Invest some time in following up customers who took time to fill out your NPS. Listen carefully to negative feedback and find a solution to make sure your customer feels heard. The power of being vulnerable might strengthen your relationship with the customer, which might lead to customer retention. And just as important: listen to your customer’s positive feedback as there is no better promotion than a satisfied customer speaking up.

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