How to retain a customer with B2B ecommerce

With this new customer centric strategy, we consider the customer to be our main asset, we are able to know what they need, how we are meeting their needs and where we are failing. 

The feedback between customer and company is necessary to get new customers but, above all, to retain the ones we already have. So you may ask yourself:

Is it cheaper to retain a customer than to get a new one?

The short answer is yes. The long answer is that we can give it to ourselves, because we only have to think about all the money we invest in acquisition strategies such as advertising costs, SEM campaigns, etc.

Some studies indicate that attracting a new customer costs up to six times more than retaining them. So, in addition to putting effort into expanding our portfolio and impacting our potential customers, we must also make sure we retain the ones we already have.

What are the techniques to retain a customer?

Now we want to introduce you to 5 techniques that will allow you to do two things:

Retain your customers
Increase the revenue of these customers
These techniques are as follows:

1. Get to know the market and your customers.

Collect information from your customers, either through market analysis or by listening to them directly on social networks.

It is also a good idea to do surveys asking them everything we need to know about them: what things they like about us, what things they don't like, what they like about the competition, what they don't like, etc.

2. Be present in your customer's life

Don't disappear. If the customer doesn't remember you, it doesn't matter what you've sold them before: the next time they need your product or service, they may want to know about other options.

Through customer-focused marketing, you will achieve a fluid dialogue that reminds customers that you are there for them.

3. Make them feel special

If every customer isn't unique to you, they should be. 

Now that you've earned their trust to buy from you, they need to feel like they're important to you. To do this, personalise your communications, attach handwritten thank you notes, observe their purchases and analyse what problems they may have in order to anticipate their wishes and encourage repeat purchases.

4. Focus on service

If you don't have a department dedicated solely to customer service, maybe it's time to create one.

If this is not possible, prepare your team to solve any problems your customers may have.

Moreover, if you make it easy for them to do business with us, they will always choose you over your competitors.
 
5. Encourage your customers to be influential in their environment.

If the current customer is the company's first asset, a recommended potential customer should be the second.

Encouraging customers to recommend us is not always easy, but we can reward them when someone comes on their behalf. 

How can we retain a customer with B2B ecommerce?

Increasingly, we users are becoming accustomed to using ecommerce in our private lives.

So much so, that we now want to forget about having to call or email for our B2B purchases when we can buy via websites.

Whoever succeeds in bringing this everyday usability to the business will stand out from the competition and retain their customers, because anything that makes shopping easy and as secure as possible will mean that your existing customers won't need to look anywhere else. 

To this end, B2B Safe has provided you with B2B Safe&Go, an online ordering platform that allows you to simultaneously manage all your offers, receive your orders and register your sales.

B2B Safe&Go connects via API to your system so that customers can see in real time your entire catalogue, your complete inventory and availability. This way, they will know how much stock your company has, place the order and also track it.

The customer will only have to add their products to the cart, as they are used to doing, and you will receive an email that will allow you to confirm the order quickly and without surprises.