Customer growth is not an option for most organizations; it is a must. Any company with ambitions beyond its immediate vicinity must expand to survive. Especially in such a competitive industry.
But, earning sales and developing a user base are not always synonymous. With long-term customer growth, especially for SaaS organizations. These are businesses built on systems based on the capacity to increase income. From existing customers while also gaining a consistent supply of new consumers.
But what does it mean to develop your consumer and client base? And how could your company improve its customer service? Do you have a customer journey in place? While also increasing profits by growing in the right way, at the right time, and with the right customers?
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What is Customer Growth?
Customer growth is what occurs when customer-centric businesses use successful customer engagement tactics. It is used to improve the customer experience and provide goods that are suited to the demands and interests of its consumers.
Finding the ideal clients and then developing their connection with your company and its brand loyalty is what growth is all about.
The definition of client growth will differ by industry. For a local retail establishment, it may mean increasing the number of regular customers or the sorts of customers you attract.
LEARN ABOUT: Client Management
A typical SaaS firm seeks to keep that first customer. Grow their engagement with the company. Afterward, send them out into the globe as brand ambassadors. Bringing in new customers or clients. It’s a challenging balance to strike in an industrial system that relies on consumer loyalty. It’s less about increasing the number of consumers and more about increasing their quality and potential.
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Customer Growth Advantages
Growth is a sign of success for many businesses. It opens up new possibilities, attracts more clients, and increases profitability. Creating loyal consumers via excellent customer service may lead to valuable long-term connections for organizations.
- Customer satisfaction: Satisfied consumers will spread the news about the company via word of mouth or social media evaluations. This might boost the company’s market share. Customers who are happy with their service are likewise less inclined to post a bad review.
- Repeat Customers: Satisfied customers are more likely to return to the same firm when they need the same product or service in the future. This indicates that the company’s customers will be loyal to its brand. Customers that buy from a business regularly may be rewarded with a loyalty program that encourages repeat purchases.
- Company Profit: Customers are prepared to pay more for a product, and a company with a strong reputation may frequently demand greater rates than one with a bad corporate reputation. This is expected to increase the company’s profitability.
Customer Growth Strategies
Companies can extend their operations with the help of a growth plan. Adding more locations, investing in new customers, and expanding a product line are all strategies to expand a firm. The business and target market of a corporation have an impact on the growth tactics it employs.
LEARN ABOUT: Perfect Customer-First Strategy
After you’ve onboarded consumers, you’ll need to start building a connection with them so you can figure out what motivates them. But how can you tell whether your consumer base is growing? Some of the most prevalent measurements are listed here.
1. Rate of Customer Churn
The customer churn rate is the percentage of customers that depart or cease doing business with you. It is generated over a specific time period. It is possible to compute it on a monthly, annual, or quarterly basis. You may simply compute a percent churn rate by using the following formula:
Churn Rate = (the amount of unsubscribed customers) / (the total number of customers at the start of the time) x 100
It is preferable to have a low churn rate. A greater churn rate implies that your service or product isn’t allowing clients to achieve the results they desire. Companies should strive for a low or negative customer turnover rate.
2. Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
MRR is a useful measure that subscription-based businesses use to see how much their customers’ spending has grown since they first started buying from them. MRR is the number of funds your consumers spend each month on your company’s products and services. This may be compared over time to see which way your recurring total sales are trending and how quickly they are changing.
You may also compute the growth MRR to track increased revenue from current clients. It is just new money earned this month compared to the previous month but without the MRR given by new customers. Current clients may simply bring extra money to the organization by using rewards programs, up-sells, and cross-sells.
3. Net Promoter Score (NPS)
A Net Promoter Score (NPS) shows the overall performance of your service and business. To calculate NPS, ask consumers if they are likely to suggest your company (or service) to a friend.
Respondents are asked to rate their likelihood of recommending a product on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 indicating “not at all likely to suggest” and 10 indicating. If someone is likely to recommend your company to someone else, it is the most crucial indication of customer development.
Customers that give you a score of 0-6 are considered Detractors, those who give you a score of 7 or 8 are considered Passives, and those who give you a score of 9 or 10 are considered real Promoters. After that, you may use the formula below to determine the NPS.
NPS = Rate of Promoters – Rate of Detractors
In general, the greater the Net Promoter Score (NPS), the better. While conducting more online research, you may come across differing viewpoints on NPS criteria per industry. The most important thing is to keep track of this indicator daily and see how it varies month to month for your firm. It will enable you to determine whether your efforts have a good impact on overall customer satisfaction.
4. Customer Lifetime Value
The entire income that a single customer might be expected to contribute over the length of their engagement with your firm is represented by the estimated Customer lifetime value (CLV) for your company. In layman’s terms, CLV is a metric that assesses the worth of a client. Your company can focus on enhancing the customer’s experience if they know how they react to the items or services.
If the LTV value rises over time, it means your product or brand is having a significant influence on customer satisfaction. If there is a drop, a company should re-evaluate its operations and strive to discover and resolve customer experience concerns.
5. Customer Retention Costs
The expense of keeping existing clients is known as customer retention cost (CRC). To put it another way, it’s the money you invest in different customer success initiatives. Tracking the cost of client retention allows organizations to make more informed decisions about how to spend on their programs. You may grow income while lowering costs by making wise investment choices.
To determine the average yearly cost per end-user (ORR) for a corporation, divide the total by the number of consumers.
6. Engagement with the customer
Is your service or product engaging your customers? While there are several ways to check and quantify consumer engagement, some of the most basic include time on site, repeat visitors, or social media reactions (likes, shares, and comments) – all of which can be readily measured and compared with a good social media reporting tool. The higher these levels, the more engaged your users become.
As a result, increasing the rate of active users is required to increase customer engagement ratings (which are typically more sophisticated metrics tailored to your company’s specifications). If you wish to measure user engagement, for example, as a subscription-based service, you may compute the daily active users (DAU) to monthly active users (MAU) ratio. It will tell you the percentage of active monthly consumers that are using your product on a particular day.
Conclusion
Customer growth is essential to your business’s success. Your firm will continue to flourish as long as your consumers find value in your product. And the customer success team must make sure that happens.
Apart from that, the entire company must adopt a customer-centric attitude for it to be reflected in the outside world. Each client encounter contributes to your brand’s reputation as a customer-centric company. It is necessary to attract new clients, but also to keep existing ones. This is the essence of multinational corporations that have grown to become worldwide brands.
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