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Stop the Churn! Practical Customer Service Tips to Increase Client Retention

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They work long and hard. Your dedicated account managers may spend hours, days or even months closing new staffing accounts.

But just a single service slip-up can cause new clients to run.

Operating with a revolving door of clients is inefficient, expensive and demoralizing for your team. After investing so much time, money and effort into landing a new client, you need to do everything within your power to keep them coming back to you. Obviously, keeping clients starts with solving their problems (i.e., delivering exceptional talent, quickly and cost-effectively). But beyond that, what can you do to improve client retention?

Here’s How to Stop the Churn!

Use these tips to keep those hard-won clients out of competitors’ clutches:

Know your churn stats.

What percent of clients do you lose each year? What percent do you retain? What percent is “new” business, as opposed to business from existing clients? How much is each client worth to your staffing firm? Before you determine which retention efforts are appropriate, you must know your numbers when it comes to churn and its financial impact.

Customer Churn Rate (CCR) is the rate staffing clients leave you. The formula for determining it is:

CCR = CE/CS

CS is the number of customers at the start of the time period (e.g., one year) and CE is the number of those customers that are still clients at the end of the time period.

On average, B2B companies lose 23% of their clients each year. If you’re doing better than that, congratulations! But if your number is higher – and your pricing and candidate quality are on par with the competition – improving your customer service can be a real difference-maker.

Improve your service delivery.

Over the past few years I’ve written dozens of posts your staffing firm can use to diagnose service problems, accelerate resolution and keep your clients happy. Here are a few that will help you improve your staffing firm’s customer service:

Don’t Be a Service Ostrich. Create a killer feedback survey to prevent service issues and identify opportunities for improvement.

New socks. Thanks a lot. Use these tips to ensure truly shareworthy service, every time.

Where does it hurt? Learn how to use triage to deliver faster, more efficient customer service.

Up your social customer service game.

Customers demand it. Your competition is already doing it. And the stats in this infographic make it crystal clear why it’s time to bring your A-game to social customer service.

Recognize the difference between healthy and unhealthy churn.

Keep in mind that not ALL client turnover is a bad thing. In fact, sometimes, turning a client down is the smartest decision for your staffing firm – especially if you’re “dropping dead weight.” Focus your retention efforts on your highest-value clients.

Have an amazing customer retention story to share? I’d love to feature it on my blog! Drop me a line – let’s talk.

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WEEKLY INSPIRATION

Get our best marketing tips—one idea a week. You’ll also get invites to our webinars, and exclusive offers on our products and services.

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.