Steve Blank - Keep Customers for the Digital Channel

If you think it’s cheaper to win new customers than to keep existing customers happy then you are wrong. Through digital channels, you can reach your customers more quickly and strengthen your bond.

I often hear from sales people how great they are and how many new customers they were able to win. At the same time, I hear that the customers bought something once and were never seen again. A good example for this is HelloFresh from the Samwer brothers. There, they boast about impressive sales figures and how many customers they have. But if you analyze these figures, you quickly realize that among all these customers there are a lot of inactive ones, and so the revenue is offset by the very high cost of (new) customer acquisition.

If the sales person did a good job in the beginning, then that’s very good for your company at first. But then it’s time to trim the internal sales and marketing department. There are many options and channels such as social media (acquire customers on your channels), loyalty programs (e.g. renew your contract for one year and you get two months free). Hold events, webinars, on-site training for your customers, or just invite your customers to a corporate event. There are many options.

We have customers who, for example, order two languages for a video. Since we have 11 languages directly available with our team, we often offer a third language at a bargain price. We don’t make any money doing this. But in the long run, we were able give something back to a customer, he “promotes” us through an additional language because he reaches more people with his video, we get better content, and we have to pay the employee anyway… So it’s always worth it to think about how to keep customers.

But regardless of what you do, some customers will always churn. Here, the declared goal is to keep customer churn to a minimum in order to stabilize revenue at first and possible generate growth (this particularly applies to a startup). Internalize this because not everything you do when you lose customers is bad. Analyze why and also ask your customer why he chose another solution, and use this to optimize your future process. Customers are often happy to blow of some steam in this regard if you ask them in the right way.

This article is written by our CEO, Bernd Korz. With his experience as an entrepreneur, he shares his vision about the lessons provided by Steve Blank. Join us every week for a new article on Steve Blank’s lectures.

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