Customer retention is one of the key factors when it comes to running a successful business. Customers are your most important asset and it’s harder work and more expensive to get new customers than to retain old ones.

There are a ton of ways to keep your customers happy, you just have to figure out what they are. One thing we do here is reach out to our customers on blogs, forums, Twitter, Facebook, etc. We even give our Grasshopper customers calls on their anniversary date to thank them for remaining a loyal customer. If you aren’t sure what the best way for you is, here are a few ideas for increasing customer retention:

1. Treat Loyal Customers Well

   All customers should be treated well but it’s especially important to keep your long-term and particularly loyal customers satisfied. Offering incentives and discounts are great ways to do this.

2. Do your Research

   Believe it or not, different kinds people have different levels of loyalty. For example, research has found married people are more loyal than singles and people reached through special interest groups are more likely to stay loyal to a company. Discover who you can effectively target and use it to your advantage.

3. Interact!

   You don’t want your customer to forget about your company or let it slip to the bottom of their mind. Keeping in touch with customers is even easier today with social media efforts- request to be added to your customers’ fan pages or follow them on Twitter!

4. Listen the Most When you Least Want To

   Of course, you would rather listen to a compliment about your business than a complaint. Unfortunately, the complaints are the ones you have to address. If you don’t address a problem a customer has with your service, or if you procrastinate with it then your chances of losing the customer increase significantly.

5. Follow Up

   Just because you think a customer is satisfied, doesn’t mean they are. And even if they are, it’s nice to feel like your company cares. Follow up with a personalized phone call to make sure they’re satisfied with the service they received. It will make a difference in the way they think about your company- guaranteed.

There are any number of challenges entrepreneurs face when starting out. Below we’ve broken down some of these challenges and the realities that come with starting a business.

Have you ever noticed that girls always seem to travel in groups at night?  Or that smaller guys at the bar always seems to act tougher when “their boys” are around?  Not so much a coincidence.  People are very much a product of their community (or “tribe” as Seth Godin might point out).  In fact this concept of “community” is a very powerful one.  It’s a pretty democratic idea when you think about it.  Community is what empowers petitions and protests to be such powerful tools.  Community is the power of people.   In fact, social media and web 2.0 websites have only made this idea of tribes even more powerful.  Why else would there be well over 40 pages of open “Community Manager” Jobs?  Why would I do what I do at Grasshopper Group and Jason do what he does for oneforty?  Because it works…and businesses need to care about their community now more than ever.  Here are a few reasons why if you don’t have a community manger…you need to hire one:

Out With Direct Sales….In With Word of Mouth

People really don’t like being sold to anymore.  Not that anyone ever woke up and thought….”I wish a salesperson would call men today”.  But it was a necessary evil…not anymore.  For instance, here at Grasshopper Group we very rarely (if ever) will engage an outside agency.  However, you better believe the very few times we did it’s because they came highly recommended….not because I got an email proposal from some company who I have never met or spoken to.  I get at least 2 of those emails every day.  Those companies need to fire their sales people and hire people who will get their truly happy customers talking more (and yelling if possible).    How do you do that?  You make them raving fans; you make them so damn happy with your work that they can’t help but talk about you.  Because you better believe if I saw a tweet that said “X-Agency is amazing!  They really embodied our brand with this Campaign”…and then that was RT’ed by someone I knew – you would have my full attention.

Read the rest of Jonathan’s guest post here

It’s official.  The world as we know it has accepted video as the most effective means currently available to communicate a message to your audience.

But why?  What makes Justine Ezarik (known as “ijustine”) able to get 500,000 people watch her in the Apple Store, dancing like a 12 year old boy who drank too much Red Bull?

How did the pantlessknights get 3,500,000 people to watch two guys dressed in black pretend to be robots and do really weird things?  It’s simple.  These innovators…these entrepreneurs, made sure that above all else, their content was spreadable.  Something only truly goes viral when it is spreadable [To clarify this term, it means you must make sure your content is fun, interesting, and easy for people to talk about].

These are your building blocks for a popular viral video:

• Humor
• Landmarks
• Music
• Relatable
• Big Cast
• Celebrities
• Inspirational
• Controversial
• Current Trends
• Shocking / New / Unique
• Or of course….Dancing Babies & Cute Kittens

Read the rest of Jonathan’s guest post here

When we asked earlier this month “Is a job at a startup right for you?,” we alluded to the importance in having not just the right skills for the job, but the right personality as well. Of course, being a good fit as an employee is important regardless of the company’s age or establishment. But it seems particularly key for startups, where it’s expected everyone share some of the same drive, ferocity and confidence that the founders do – that so-called “startup culture.”

There can be strong pressures to simply hire someone – anyone – particularly if your startup is experiencing a rapid growth spurt and desperately needs to bring on more staff. And this pressure can make you feel like the cultural fit isn’t as much a concern as just filling the seat. According to Jonathan Kay, Grasshopper‘s “Ambassador of Buzz,” the founders of the small-business support company say that ignoring the importance of culture while hiring was one of the early mistakes they made. “When we hit our big boom,” says Kay, “we were hiring people left and right and were worried primarily with bringing in the best technical fit for the job.”

To help address this, Grasshopper spells out key elements of its company culture and makes sure these values are stressed during the hiring process. Noting that this means much of an interview is devoted to assessing this cultural fit, Kay says that employees need to demonstrate they have these core values, not just the requisite skill set, in order to move forward in the interview process.

Arguably, that cultural fit can be seen in a variety of ways. You can ask questions during the interview process. You can, as Mark Suster suggests, schedule one meeting with job candidates take place over food. You can probably hazard a few guesses based on the absence of creativity in a resume (or, I suppose, the presence of Comic Sans). You can look at your potential hires’ past experience with startups, their side projects, and their social media presence in order to gauge whether or not they fit with your culture.

Of course, all this assumes you know what your company culture is – not merely the grandiose wording of a mission statement, but the ways in which your team actually works together.

Audrey Watters July 19, 2010

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