How to maximise customer retention

Picture this, you have a customer who's had an amazing experience with your company. They're so happy that they want to tell all their friends and family about it! This is the perfect opportunity for building deeper relationships as well as increasing sales by giving customers what makes them interested to come back again and again.

Every business should have a clear customer service strategy. It is one of the most effective ways to ensure that your customers are happy and loyal to your company. A well-designed effective customer service strategies can help you to connect with every customer, understand their needs and build a roadmap for your company based on their feedback.



What is a Customer Service Strategy?

A customer service strategy is a set of guidelines that determine how your business will interact with customers – both directly and via other channels such as social media. You should be developing customer service before you start selling products or services to customers so that you have clear guidelines about what your business aims to achieve for each customer interaction. A Customer Service Strategy includes how to create:

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Proto employee conduting a customer research interview Prototyping experiment - pedestrians crossing a busy intersection near to train station

Benefits of a customer strategy: actionable steps

A comprehensive strategy to improve customer service combines customer experience insights with service-driven design to create an easy-to-follow strategy. This strategy can be used to guide an organisation in delivering service excellence.

However, businesses commonly struggle to design service strategy. There are many problems that they face while developing one, including lack of knowledge on how best to approach the process, understanding what exactly should be included in their plan and knowing what initiatives need implementing into daily business practices.

A common issue amongst companies trying new things is executing well enough so as not only to keep up with customer demands but actually being ahead of them- this can prove difficult when starting from scratch without any prior experience under your belt.

A clear customer service strategy is composed of steps that are simple to understand and quick to implement. It gives everyone in business a leading role when it comes to providing an exceptional customer experience.

A well-developed customer service strategy can provide many benefits for your business including increased sales, lower return rates, more referrals from satisfied customers and happier staff members.

By providing a great customer experience, you’re able to increase the number of customers who come back again and again because they like your business. This means that when there is an opportunity for them to buy another product or service from someone else - they will choose yours instead.

When customers are happy with the service they receive, it builds trust and loyalty between them and your business. This often results in customers not needing to return or complain about a purchase because they were satisfied with what they received.

A satisfied customer is likely to tell others about the great experience they had with your business. This can create new customers for your company without spending any additional money on marketing.

Happy and engaged employees are more likely to provide exceptional customer service. This means that you don’t have to worry about your customers leaving unsatisfied because chances are, the employee who helped them will go above and beyond to make sure they’re happy.

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Customer strategy that really works

Access a customer-focused strategy that will increase customer lifetime value and future proof your business

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How to create a successful Customer Service Strategy

It's crucial to start by communicating customers' needs in a language that resonates with employees. Remove the jargon and concentrate on providing practical, actionable steps towards an outstanding customer experience. Set goals, measure progress.

Everyone deserves the chance to deliver outstanding customer service and be recognised for their efforts.

A comprehensive customer service strategies provides clear accountability for every department, team and employee, helping each member of staff understand exactly what their role is and how they can contribute to the customer experience.

An effective customer service strategy that clashes with the culture and organisational principles of a business can be a frustrating experience. So when creating a strategy, the focus should be on creating a unique solution that can be embedded with minimal disruption to the organisation and emphasises the core values of the company's culture.

When creating a customer service strategy, there are a few things to consider:

Creating a customer service strategy can seem daunting, but it's important to remember that the goal is always to make customers happy.

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Hoyts employee pointing out menu items to a customer Hand writing Customer Service on a blue post it
Five Proto employees having an innovation strategy workshop

Optus customer service strategy successes

Optus knows the value of clear communication, so they came to us with the singular aim of opening a rewarding dialogue with their customers and placing them at the heart of a digitally focused customer experience that would cement Optus' reputation as Australia's most loved and recommended service brand.

To keep pace with the changing expectations of their customer base, Optus needed a Customer Service Strategy that was agile and reactive, a comprehensive toolset that would allow them to adapt organically to evolving customer needs and the design of employee experience to drive the cultural change.

Optus shop with customers being served

"Proto worked hand-in-hand with us to bring the internal team up to speed, and also brought in global experts who acted as 'force multipliers' to work with us to take our deliverables to another level of quality and innovation. The customer research, innovation in the service design and outputs created were of a very high quality and have succeeded in making our aspiration tangible and in guiding the business forwards."

Dan Sunderland; Director of Customer Experience Strategy & Planning at Optus

Customer strategy that really works

Access a customer-focused strategy that will increase customer lifetime value and future proof your business

GET IN TOUCH

FAQ

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What is a Customer Service Strategy?

A customer service strategy provides a consistent customer experience throughout the journey and allows you to correctly handle customer interactions.

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What is Customer Loyalty?

Customer Loyalty is a measure of a customer’s likelihood to do repeat business with an organisation, as a result of customer satisfaction, positive customer experiences and the overall value of the goods or services received.

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Why is Customer Loyalty important?

Customer loyalty increases profits, improves sales success and allows for sustainable growth through retaining existing customers and attracting new customers.

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How can I create a more successful customer service strategy

Communicating customers' needs in a language that resonates with employees, removing the jargon and concentrating on providing practical, actionable steps towards an outstanding customer experience. Set goals, measure progress. A strong customer service strategy provides clear accountability for every department, team and employee, helping each member of staff understand exactly what their role is and how they can contribute to the customer experience. When creating a strategy, the focus should be on creating a unique solution that can be embedded with minimal disruption to the organisation and emphasises the core values of the company's culture.

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What is a customer experience strategy?

Customer Experience Strategy is the development of a strategy that articulates a clear vision of the experience that a company seeks to create in support of the company’s brand values, including its direct linkage to CX activities, resources and investments.

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How can a customer experience strategy be utilized?

By defining a customer experience strategy that describes the intended customer experience, its linkage to overall corporate objectives, and its alignment with the organisation’s brand values and attributes. Following this, development of experience principles and specific employee behaviours and interactions that reflect brand values and organisational mission is used to help articulate the operating plan, investments, and tactics for programmatic components of the CX strategy. A customer experience strategy communicates and engages employees at all levels of the organisation in the elements of the CX strategy.

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“Working with Proto was a leap of faith, but they have become a major strategic partner in our CX evolution. The work they've developed and the way we've been able to embed it in the organisation has been absolutely phenomenal, and we're getting the outcomes we want.”

Felicity Clark
Felicity Clark Customer Experience Manager

Creating empathy to deliver outstanding results


“Proto were a pleasure to work with. They were adaptive and responsive, and developed a deep empathy for both the client and their customers. The quality of their products and services was outstanding.”

Michael Storey
Michael Storey Manager of Customer Research and Strategy at Sydney Water

Halving your customer churn


“Without the customer experience insights from the research program, we would not have been able to identify the acquisition issues that we had. Changes to the customer interactions that led up to financial protection have reduced the outflow rates by 50%.”

Felicity Rowcliff Dean
Felicity Rowcliff Dean Customer Centred Design Manager

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Matthew Liebmann
Matthew Liebmann Former Chief Operating Officer

Enabling customer-centric design


“Over the last 18 months, we've constantly referred to the work Proto did for us when designing and developing all the improvements to the app we're making. We've found their work to be highly valuable and has resulted in significant improvements to the MyOptus App that, without their insight wouldn't have been possible.”

Lucy Turner
Lucy Turner CX Design Launch Manager

Exceptional prototyping


“The outcome of the prototyping has been exceptional and we continue to use the knowledge and expertise that Proto shared with us during their engagement. The icing on the cake for me was that Proto captured all of the insights from the customer workshops into an organisational asset that we now use as an integral part of our toolkit for training and briefing new team members.”

Sharon Nanetti
Sharon Nanetti Optimal Care Program Director

Prioritising what matters


“Proto's in-depth customer research helped us to uncover underlying customer needs that wouldn't have been possible without an 'outside-in' approach. The team identified the core customer problems and provided actionable insights that enabled us to remove key areas of customer friction and frustration and redesign a credit card experience like no other.”

Christian Johansson
Christian Johansson Head of Marketing, Customer Finance

Achieving a 20 point increase in NPS


“I have worked with Damian and the team at Proto for several years. In this time, they have worked collaboratively with us to build a roadmap of strategic 'outside-in' initiatives that ultimately resulted in a 20 point increase in NPS. They imparted a great deal of CX knowledge, approaches and tools that have been invaluable to the team and the business.”

Amanda O'Donnell
Amanda O'Donnell Head of Customer Experience

Insight driven, customer centric ideas


“Proto revealed and captured a ton of insights, putting Gumtree in a position where we can take our experience from good to great!”

Coen Horrevoets
Coen Horrevoets Head of Product

Award-winning customer experiences


“We won the AFR Smart Investor SMILES award for Best Online Broker. This award is based on customer voting and I believe this was as a result of a clearer focus on our existing clients which you helped us to understand.”

Arni Selvarajah
Arnie Selvarajah Chief Executive Officer

Design that reduces cost to serve


“The Proto team demonstrated flexibility in their approach which made such a refreshing change. They took the time to coach and mentor each of us in a highly creative and energetic environment. Furthernore, they helped us exceed our customer satisfaction targets, all whilst stripping out in excess of 20% of our service costs in under 12 months. Proto helped us to stay focussed on the customer which enabled us to win in the market.”

Matthew Anderson
Matthew Anderson Chief Operating Officer

Service innovation at scale


“We worked with Proto on an exciting & unprecedented challenge at Optus, to design the customer experience of the future. Damian & the team had high energy & together we operated as 'one team'. Proto worked hand in hand with us to bring the internal team up to speed, & also brought in global experts to work with us to take our deliverables to another level of quality & innovation.”

Dan Sunderland
Dan Sunderland Director of Customer Experience Strategy and Planning

Actionable Customer Strategies


“Proto developed a membership strategy that addressed points of friction along our members journey, identified opportunities to improve and clarified the types of engagement that our members needed at the different stages in their career. We were impressed with the depth of insight that Proto were able to bring to the project - as well as the energy and ideas that they helped to generate.”

Sarah Thompson
Sarah Prescott-Thompson General Manager Shared Services

A partnership for CX


“Working with Proto was very much a partnership. We worked hand-in-hand to put CX on the map within the organisation. The team are flexible, trustworthy and do what it takes to achieve the best outcome. If you’re looking for a quality agency, providing quality data and insights – Proto are your guys. We received over 90 initiatives from the project of which 79% have now been implemented and we are seeing the benefits flow through!”

Customer Experience Specialist

Unique Product Innovation


“Proto integrated into multiple simultaneous projects to ensure we achieved the best outcome. They brought real clarity around customer needs, the fundamental elements of our value proposition and provided a clear roadmap of where we're trying to get to. This allowed us to differentiate beyond the traditional proposition. As a result, one customer-informed initiative we developed was loanScore™. This unique innovation helps customers see how good their home loan is and evaluate their options for a better deal.”

Anthony Justice
Anthony Jusitce CEO