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15 Comments

How do you retain customers?

I realized there're so many mechanics involved beyond "building a great product" to retain customers.

One of my favorite things to do for Mumu is to thank people that gave feedback when I ship updates.

Mumu Changelog

And people love it! They value for being heard and regarded.

So how about you all?
What's your approach to retain customers?

  1. 3

    I run a customer success team that's responsible for retaining $50+ M in annual revenue. I love chatting about retention and such, but the simple keys seem to boil down to this:

    1. Make sure the product does a clearly defined job for the customer
    2. Help the customer use the product to get the job done
    3. Make sure the customer can see and feel that the job is being done
    4. Discover ways the job can be done better
    5. Take that new info to adjust the product/service
    6. Repeat
    1. 1

      Hey Andrew! Thanks for the principles you've written there. Can't agree more with that.

      Actually the more tactical question would be: what strategies that you employ to tackle #2 and #3?

      1. 1

        In a high touch model, where you have frequent personal interactions with a customer, the answers to those two points will be different than a low-touch product. I'll be talking about low-touch ideas in the rest of this comment, but to get into specific details, I'd need to know more about the product and why users use it.

        For point 2, your product design and user flow matters a lot. If my main job to be done requires a bunch of overhead and complexity, I'll go back to doing whatever I was doing before. Help me get to value realization as quickly as possible. Answer my questions just before I'm about to ask them. Having an intimate understanding of what the user journey journey looks like helps you surface the right info and steps at the right time. Some people do product tours. I don't care much for product tours...users want to get their job done so help them do that as fast as possible.

        For point 3, Grammarly does an excellent job of making me understand what value I'm getting from the product. I get a weekly email that summarizes my performance, how many errors it solved for me, how I rank to other users, and tips to fix my specific frequent errors.

        1. 1

          Got it. Will employ some of the strategies from here. Thanks Andrew!

          1. 1

            Let me know if you have any other questions I could help with! Customer success is my jam

  2. 2

    We (https://wildkard.io) do community calls with our top users every 3 months and send swag in return for their time. It has helped us form a strong early user community.

  3. 1

    Love this idea. Has this improved your retention? Do you have any numbers around it or even anecdotal evidence you can share? I ask because I'd like to write it up (crediting you of course) 😀

    1. 1

      Hey @wilbertliu just thought I'd follow up. I'd love to get more info!

  4. 1

    Hey Will any idea how I could 'gift' Mumu to my gf?

    1. 1

      Hello Rohit! Basically you just have to visit Mumu's landing page and hit the "buy button" to get the license key and the executable.

      Let me know if you need more help 😉

  5. 1

    Ooo, that's a neat idea.

    People like being heard and acknowledged.

    Stealing this one if I may!

    1. 1

      Sure! Let us know the result too 😊

  6. 1

    Oh, I like that, nice idea!

    1. 1

      Thanks Rosie! I’d love to learn from the fellow founders too here. Surely what works for them would somehow inspire others too.

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