Retention (or Reselling) in Contact Centres

Retention is probably the wrong word to use to describe this activity. What we’re talking about is reselling. Customers call in and say “Look, I’m paying too much for this annual subscription…” and they will threaten to take their business elsewhere. That’s clearly the last thing you want, so the value needs to be resold. Sadly, that reselling element is often forgotten. The value of the service is ignored, and the conversation goes straight to price.

The customer may well have called in about the price, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t talk about the value.

The other issue is that when you are receiving calls of this nature in bulk – you view them the same way, as if they’re all people with the same problem, whereas if we look at their account and see what comments we have about them there will be very specific things each customer wants. That tailoring of value to customers is still essential in retention.

The problem is added too, by letters being sent out to generate calls, and allowing staff to use disloyal bonding to act as though the letter was a mistake by someone higher up and that ‘I am the person that can put it right for you’. In actual fact your job is to initially defend the rational of the renewal letter. Rather than pretending, which is another word for a lie.

We forget that inflation grows the cost of living every year, and companies need to make money or there’s no point existing. The good news about retention is the cost of keeping someone is way less than finding a new customer. So, this is an essential and high profit sales channel for any brand.

Retention is an area we’ve done masses of work in over the last 10 years – if it’s your area why not give us a call?