Experts advocate customer retention strategy for SMEs

Businesses, especially the small and medium enterprises (SMEs), can hardly survive if there is lack of customer retention strategy, say experts at a business forum organised by VConnect, an online portal for businesses.

According to the experts, which include Ebele Odenigbo, managing director of Dadachi Consulting, this customer retention strategy gives room for the customers to continually seek for the goods and services of an entrepreneur as a result of the selfless services being rendered, which invariably yields profits.

In as much as a business is concern, says Odenigbo, the major player remains the customers and must be given the utmost personality treatment. “Customer retention strategy becomes relatively important to the successful operation of businesses, contributing to the increment on sales and invariably yielding revenue to any business venture, as long as an entrepreneur prioritises the satisfaction of customers, before profit making,” he says.

He explains that this may have been declined as a result of the enormity of predicaments confronting customer retention strategy, which remains a variable tool for the sustainability of any business.

A data analysis presented by Dadachi Consulting at the conference held recently in Lagos shows the reason behind customers leaving a particular seller for another. It shows that 69 percent of customers leave due to the attitude of the business owners or employer, 14 percent as a result of product dissatisfaction, 9 percent due to other competitors, 5 percent due to other suppliers, and 3 percent of the customers have no reason for leaving.

The effects of the lack of customer retention strategy are felt as a result lack of training for the employees that attend to the customers in the business terrain, leading to the poor techniques in dealing with customers and in the long run affecting the profits of business owners, Odenigbo points out.