How can you use customer retention research to find new opportunities?

Customer retention research is the process of collecting and analyzing data on how your customers interact with your products or services, why they stay loyal or churn, and what they value or expect from you. It can help you improve your customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy, as well as identify new opportunities to grow your business. In this article, you will learn how to use customer retention research to find new opportunities in four steps.

1 Define your research goals

Before you start your customer retention research, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and how you will measure it. For example, do you want to increase your retention rate, reduce your churn rate, or boost your customer lifetime value? Do you want to understand the reasons behind your customers' behavior, preferences, or feedback? Do you want to explore new ways to enhance your value proposition, offer, or experience? Your research goals will guide your choice of research methods, data sources, and analysis techniques.

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2 Choose your research methods

Gathering and analyzing data on customer retention can be done in a variety of ways depending on your research goals. Surveys, interviews, focus groups, and observations are all popular methods. Surveys can be conducted using online tools, email, or phone and ask customers to rate their satisfaction, loyalty, or advocacy. Interviews can be conducted with one-on-one conversations to gain deeper insights into customers' needs and expectations. Focus groups are a way to invite a group of customers to discuss their opinions or experiences with products or services. Lastly, observations can be done by observing how customers use products or services, interact with the brand, or respond to marketing campaigns. Analytics tools, user testing, and ethnography are all useful for conducting observations.

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André Antunes

Director of Base Management and Retention | Marketing and Customer Value Management Expert | Harvard Executive Program Graduate
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The choice depends on your research objectives and your budget. Qualitative research, through means as focus groups and in-depth interviews with individuals, excels at providing deep insights, and raising new hypotheses. Quantitative research, is ideal to test hypotheses, make statistically supported extrapolations and measure trends. It relies on surveys with substantial sample sizes, representing the broader user base accurately. Using both methods provides a more comprehensive understanding. However, it can be costlier, so it should align with your goals and the potential financial returns from the findings. Ultimately, striking the right balance between qualitative and quantitative can yield valuable insights in customer retention

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3 Analyze your data

Once you have collected your data, analyzing it is the next step. You can use descriptive analysis to summarize your data with statistics, charts, or graphs to describe customer retention metrics. Inferential analysis is useful for testing hypotheses or assumptions using statistics, models, or experiments to explain customer retention factors. Predictive analysis uses data mining, machine learning, or artificial intelligence to forecast customer retention outcomes. Finally, prescriptive analysis uses optimization, simulation, or recommendation systems to suggest the best actions to improve customer retention performance.

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4 Find your opportunities

Analyzing your data is just the first step in finding opportunities to improve customer retention and grow your business. You can use frameworks such as SWOT analysis, GAP analysis, and Value Proposition Canvas to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats related to customer retention. This research can help you create or enhance your value proposition, offer, or experience. It can also help you identify gaps that need to be addressed or areas that can be improved. With these four steps, you can use customer retention research to stay ahead of the competition and increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy.

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5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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How can you use customer retention research to find new opportunities?

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1 Define your research goals

2 Choose your research methods

3 Analyze your data

4 Find your opportunities

5 Here’s what else to consider

Customer Retention

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How can you use customer retention research to find new opportunities?

1

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1 Define your research goals

2 Choose your research methods

3 Analyze your data

4 Find your opportunities

5 Here’s what else to consider

Customer Retention

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