By Greg Chappell, Vice President Global Sales and Partner Success at Think On, Inc.
Retaining customers is central to your growth as a vendor. Ask any account manager and they will tell you that happy customers mean less footwork, increased business, and most of all exponential revenue. So, how do you reduce the struggle to retain customers so you can focus on revenue growth and leave the troubleshooting to your competitors?
At ThinkOn, we know that your cloud provider plays a crucial role in keeping your customers happy. And a happy customer makes a happy—and more profitable—partner. It’s a commitment we make to streamline your sales and support efforts. In other words, we focus on your customers’ needs, so you can focus on growing your business.
Happy customer, happy partner: 99% customer retention says it all
Customer retention is big business. The more attractive your churn rate, the less effort it takes to grow revenues. After all, it’s easier to sell to existing customers who already know and trust you.
In an article for Business News Daily, Max Freeman acknowledges the power of customer retention on your bottom line: “The benefit of managing customer relationships is immense… According to Zippia, a 5 percent increase in customer retention results in a profit increase of 25 to 95 percent, with 65 percent of a company’s sales coming from returning customers.”[2]
With that much profit at stake for our partners, we take customer retention very seriously at ThinkOn. Our track record is impressive: More than 99 percent of your customers who sign on with a ThinkOn service will still be a customer three years later.
How do we do that? By taking the struggle out of meeting your customers’ needs. That encompasses a comprehensive strategy for customer support that saves you time and resources, and increases customer satisfaction with:
- A cloud-smart, custom approach to digital solutions that accelerates outcomes
- Trouble-free operations in all our digital solutions
- Best-in-class, multi-pronged approach to cybersecurity and data protection
- No capacity headaches or cost overruns
- Simplicity and transparency in pricing
- Full data compliance and true data sovereignty
- Innovation and collaboration with best-in-class partners
- Compatibility with the operating system of choice
- 24/7 customer support
When your customer experiences less downtime, more data insights, reliable data protection, smooth operations, and accelerated business outcomes, they come back for more trusted services from the company they trust. It’s seamless for you, cost-effective for the customer—and revenues take care of themselves.
Misinformation and Confusion: The cloud provider bandits that eat at your revenue
So, what makes a customer stay with you when there’s so much competition out there?
Customers want to work with a company they trust, so they can get on with the business of managing and growing their business. Your customer deserves the whole truth from their cloud provider, not bold claims of sky-high technology stacks and brand name bragging.
Simple, predictable, and transparent pricing is about consistency. With ThinkOn services, the quote, the service order, and the invoice can be easily reconciled. With some service providers, including the larger hyperscalers, you may get a complicated quote for various services, but your invoice looks like alphabet soup, which means it’s impossible to reconcile the costs back to your customer on what they’re paying for.
That’s a good way to annoy and confuse your customer, making them feel cheated about what they signed up for. It can also mean escalating costs that you, as a partner, will have to explain to an unhappy customer. That’s time you could be upselling by honing in on what the customer needs to succeed, or working on new business—and a hit to your revenues that’s hard to reconcile.
Hidden fees, ingress and egress fees, and data-hungry cloud applications that the customer doesn’t understand are other ways to confound your clients and send them hitchhiking for a better deal elsewhere. The shock of unexpected budget overruns caused by your cloud provider is a sure way to steal money from your customers’ pockets—dollars that could be used to provide valuable services that will accelerate outcomes for the customer and grow revenues for you.
The personal touch—a first-class way to serve and protect your customers
If you want to grow your business, you need to protect your customers, and that means servicing their needs. Customers are quick to move on if they have a bad experience, and that can just as quickly impact your bottom line. According to Zippia Career experts, “Businesses lose over $75 billion each year to lost customers due to poor customer service.”[3]
ThinkOn is an agile, partner-and-customer−focussed company. We’re all about what makes you grow—by helping you serve your customers and making your sales and management process easy.
Our customer support is second to none, so if you or your customer have a question, we’re only a call or chat away. We work to address concerns while you get on with your business growth, knowing that your customer is in expert hands.
With some providers, customer support leaves town as soon as the contract is signed. Overworked and frustrated IT professionals are left to solve issues on their own, leading to burnout and—potentially—walkout. We won’t leave your team or your customer straining to solve problems when we have the expertise to solve issues quickly. With the skills gap in today’s digital landscape, that can save a lot of heartache. In the event of a cyber attack, it’s a crucial lifeline that can save your customer’s business and ensure that you keep a client from walking.
A customer in hand is worth 3x the growth
Retaining customers is a catalyst for growth. It reduces your hours searching for new customers and enables partners to focus on selling more cloud services that contribute to better customer outcomes.
Given that the cost to acquire new customers is six to seven times higher than what it takes to retain existing ones, and the top 10 percent of most loyal customers will spend an average of three times more per purchase than the remaining 90 percent, customer retention is an important contribution to your bottom line.[4]
Customer retention reduces customer support needs, improves and enhances operations for you and your customers, and allows you to focus on your revenue, not customer problems and nasty surprises. ThinkOn takes the struggle out of customer retention, so you can focus on growth.
Learn more about customer retention the ThinkOn way in Part One of our “So, What Makes a Great Digital Partnership” series where we take a deep dive into the Cloud Provider/Partner relationship and what you should expect from your cloud provider.
[1] Zippia. Abbey McCain. 2023. “28 Critical Customer Retention Statistics [2023]: Average Customer Retention Rate by Industry.” https://www.zippia.com/advice/customer-retention-statistics/
[2] Business News Daily. Max Freedman. 2023. “How to Calculate Your Customer Retention Rate.” https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/16027-customer-retention-rate.html
[3] Zippia. Abbey McCain. 2023. “28 Critical Customer Retention Statistics [2023]: Average Customer Retention Rate by Industry.” https://www.zippia.com/advice/customer-retention-statistics/
[4] Ibid.