Did you know that American businesses lose $62 billion a year because of poor customer service? That’s a lot of green flying out the window on an annual basis!
Fortunately, there’s a way to buck this trend: invest in the best customer retention tools.
In this article, we’ll explain what a customer retention tool is and why they’re important. Then we’ll list seven tools that every business should be using in 2024. Let’s take a look…
What is a Customer Retention Tool?
It’s pretty simple, a customer retention tool is any solution that helps a company retain their customers. Tools in this category include communication apps, customer loyalty platforms, web analytics solutions, digital surveys, and more.
Customer retention tools are important because retaining your company’s patrons is one of the quickest ways to find business success, regardless of industry.
Studies have shown that a 5% boost in customer retention can lift an organization’s revenue numbers by 25-95%. More than that, it costs, on average, 5 to 25 times more to secure a new customer than it does to retain an existing one.
In other words, customer retention tools will help you save money and make more of it.
What Are the Best Customer Retention Tools?
Customer retention tools are essential to the success of your business. The question is, which apps and platforms should you invest your hard-earned money in? Here are the seven best customer retention tools on the market in 2024:
1. HubSpot
HubSpot’s range of tools make the difficult task of retaining customers much easier. Its CRM software will allow you to track each customer’s experience with your brand. You can then optimize the buyer’s journey and your sales process to better accommodate your patrons.
HubSpot also offers marketing and sales tools such as a blog editor, email marketing platform, and call recording capabilities, enabling teams to better satisfy their audience.
Finally, HubSpot has an entire customer support suite you can use to increase your retention metrics. Use this tool to quickly view past interactions with customers, automate tedious manual tasks, create self-service portals, run website chatbots, and more.
All in all, HubSpot is a great platform that will help you track and improve every engagement between your team and the customers you serve.
2. Yotpo
Yotpo is designed to help you build trust and loyalty with your customers.
This is important considering the fact that 81% of consumers say they need to trust a brand before buying from them. And the average loyal customer spends 67% more in months 31 through 36 than they do in the first 6 months of their relationship with a new brand.
Basically, people won’t buy from you if they don’t trust you. But once you gain their trust and turn them into loyal customers, they’ll reward you with increased spending!
Yotpo uses AI to collect product reviews, testimonials, etc. and display them on your website, which is a fantastic way to build trust with your target audience. But the fun doesn’t stop there. Use Yotpo to create a winning custom loyalty program that keeps customers coming back.
Want to give your audience points for every dollar they spend? What about specific incentives for referring their friends to your business? You can do all that and more with Yotpo.
3. SurveyMonkey
figure>To improve your customer retention efforts, you have to know what your current customers like and don’t like about the experience you provide them. How do you do that? Simple, send them a survey with SurveyMonkey, a trusted customer feedback platform.
Use this customer retention tool to quickly create and send surveys, quizzes, and polls to your audience. Then analyze the responses to get the in-depth feedback you need. Finally, display the results in beautiful formats that include graphs, charts, and dashboards.
As an additional bonus, SurveyMonkey integrates with many other top tools including Salesforce, Slack, Google Drive, and HubSpot (mentioned above.) This means you can easily share the information you glean from surveys and turn it into action.
We should mention that SurveyMonkey also allows users to survey outside audiences for market research purposes, create winning CX programs, and improve employee engagement.
4. HotJar
Hotjar is another customer retention tool that will help you learn more about your unique audience. Specifically, you’ll learn how your customers interact with your website.
One of Hotjar’s most popular features is its heatmaps software. With this tool, you’ll be able to easily see what your website visitors click on most—buttons, pages, etc. Hotjar also allows you to record website sessions so you can view every action on your site.
Plus, the Hotjar platform includes behavioral analytics information regarding your conversion funnels and online forms, and allows users to send polls and surveys.
With the help of Hotjar, you’ll be able to discover exactly what people do (and don’t do) on your company’s website. You can then use these details to craft better online experiences for them, enabling you to improve your customer retention metrics in less time.
5. Google Analytics
When it comes to web analytics platforms, Google Analytics is the unquestioned leader—with good reason! This customer retention tool is easy to use and completely free.
It will also give you a load of information about the people who visit your website, such as which pages they spend the most time on, the time of day they’re most active, specific pages they stay away from, and even the monetary value of your web traffic.
Like we discussed earlier, the more you know about your customers, the more you can optimize your interactions with them and increase retention.
6. Optimizely
All of the customer retention tools we’ve covered so far help you get information. But what do you do with that information once you have it? Answer: use it!
Let’s pretend you ran a survey to learn what product features your customers like best. You then used Yotpo to display reviews that mention these features on the homepage of your company’s website. Now the question is, where on the homepage should the reviews be?
Optimizely helps you run A/B tests to see what performs best. That way you can turn your website into the ultimate customer experience machine.
All you have to do is create a hypothesis about your site. Then use Optimizely to test it against the control (the way your website is already configured) to see if your clicks, conversions, etc. go up or down. The cool part is, almost any item or function can be tested.
7. Zight (formerly CloudApp)
Finally, we have Zight (formerly CloudApp), a customer retention tool that makes it quick, easy, and even fun to communicate with your audience. This is because Zight (formerly CloudApp) combines screen recording, GIF creation, and image annotation features into one, cloud-based solution.
Need to answer a customer question? Don’t send them an email—emails take too long to type and, let’s be honest, your customers have no interest in reading them.
Instead, show your customers how to solve their problem by annotating a screenshot or simply shooting a quick video of your screen to illustrate your solution. If you want, you can even turn your video into a GIF for easy distribution.
Speaking of distribution, once your content has been created, it’s easy to share via email, Slack, Google Docs, or a customer support platform like Zendesk or Jira.
The way you handle customer questions and complaints will, in large part, determine your company’s retention rate. After all, nobody wants to buy from a brand that is rude and/or unhelpful. Zight (formerly CloudApp) helps you ensure these interactions are the best they can be!
The best part is, Zight (formerly CloudApp) is completely free to use! Sign up today to get started. If you decide you want access to premium features in the future, plans start at just $9.95 a month.
Get the Customer Retention Tools You Need
Fact: your business will be stronger if you retain more of your customers. The seven best customer retention tools in this article will help you serve your audience and gain their loyalty.
We encourage you to invest in some (or all!) of the solutions listed above. Some are free, like Zight (formerly CloudApp), while others cost a monthly fee. But all, when used correctly, will help your company boost its retention rate, increase revenue, and find more success.