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Between 25% and 40% of all revenue comes from return customers. That's one-fourth to nearly half of all sales and purchased services, according to Tallyfy. Per visit, returning customers drive 3 to 7 times the revenue of first-time visits. This is easy enough to understand. Returning customers trust your brand and know what they want. They may be coming back for more of their first purchase or to discover what other treasures are available for purchase or subscription. However, paradoxically, most of the effort of marketing and sales is often directed solely at attracting new customers to make their first purchase. This is a classic example of customer lifecycle oversight.
Many companies across the world focus too much on reach and acquisition without putting their efforts into the more valuable nurturing of return customers. In the financial services industry, customer nurturing and long-term relationships are even more important because clients may engage with a single financial service for years, not just a one-time purchase. The process of acquiring new customers and bringing back existing customers is known as the customer lifecycle.
WHAT IS THE CUSTOMER LIFECYCLE?
We can look at customer behavior in the same way we look at nature's natural cycles. Customers come, convert, purchase, and leave. Some customers, if given a reason, come back to repeat the conversion and purchase process many times in the future; others come to shop once and only once. Customer lifecycle management is essential for building a large and strong base of clients. In most industries, the customer lifecycle has five stages:
The 5 Stages of the Customer Lifecycle
- Reach
Make new leads aware of your brand and the products or services you have to offer. - Acquisition
Persuading new leads to explore the brand, shop, and seriously consider a purchase. - Conversion
The process of a customer choosing to purchase or sign up. - Retention
How a customer feels after their purchase. Satisfaction often results in return customers. - Loyalty
The sense that customers trust your brand. Customers return for a reliable and enjoyable experience.
Customer Lifecycle in Financial Services
When we narrow our view to the financial industry, the customer lifecycle becomes more complex. This is due to the nature of financial services and the level of decision-making required for a customer to 'convert.' The lifecycle is also longer because financial services like loans, credit, and insurance are designed to last years - not a single purchase to be repeated or forgotten.
A new customer in financial services also needs a stage of research, calculating tools, and education/information before they can make a firm decision. At the same time, the modern customer prefers independent decision-making over working with a sales rep. This adds a new challenge to nurturing the financial services customer lifecycle.
HOW REVOPS IS DESIGNED TO IMPROVE THE CUSTOMER LIFECYCLE
Revenue operations, or RevOps for short, is a new way of approaching both introductory customer experience and long-term customer care. RevOps focuses on unifying the old multi-stage strategy of marketing, sales, and customer care because the modern customer experience is far more fluid than sales in the past.
Modern Clients are Self-Directed
Customers are self-driven through websites and apps to follow up on awareness with their own engagement and conversion process - sometimes going back and forth between the middle stages (or between marketing, sales, and customer support) several times before the final conversion. In fact, over 80% of customers reach out for some form of customer support before making a purchase, and 50% will choose another vendor if they can't find answers to their questions.
Personalized Automation as Customer Care
Customers associate a brand's quality and dedication based on the performance of their automated software and the quality of their customer services. Over 70% of customers choose to remain loyal to brands that offer high-quality and experientially consistent customer service.
If your automation is highly personalized, leading customers directly to what they want - and remembering their preferences when they return - customers will feel more personally taken care of. This simulates the care and consideration of a live sales rep while still leaving your clients feeling independent and confidently self-directed in their decision-making.
HOW REVOPS INCREASES CUSTOMER LOYALTY AND LIFETIME VALUE
RevOps is the act of unifying customer conversion and care methods into one continuous customer experience. RevOps is not only built to attract and convert new customers, but also to nurture long-term customer relationships and, therefore, boost customer loyalty. This is done by unifying data and methods across marketing, sales, and customer service teams to truly hone what customers experience when patronizing your business.
Personalized Experiences and Customer Loyalty
This, naturally, has a profound impact on the customer lifecycle. RevOps embraces both onboarding for new customers and an enjoyably reliable experience for returning customers. Using data-driven techniques and personalized automation, RevOps focuses on ensuring that when a customer returns, they feel welcomed and remembered. Their account logs them in quickly, their past orders and searches can be referenced, and even their past customer service calls are on file so the next call is like a continuation of the same conversation.
This kind of care and attention to detail builds loyalty and even first-conversion customers returning to their cart will feel what it's like to be a valued customer within your brand. As a result, customer loyalty increases, and the lifetime value of each new-customer conversion.
Customer Loyalty to Brand Evangelists
RevOps also seeks to impress customers so profoundly that they become evangelists for your brand - promoting your financial services to others and providing a steady source of referrals. In financial services, this means creating a service that is so beneficial and welcoming that customers want their friends and family to share in that benefit when they come to need financial services.
With nurturing RevOps, customer loyalty goes above and beyond return business and can evolve into referrals and brand promotion from the clients themselves.
HOW CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IS IMPROVED BY REVOPS STRATEGIES
RevOps takes the structure of marketing-to-sales out of the modern business model. Instead of customers being drawn in by marketing and then transferred as MQLs to sales, RevOps seeks to improve the experience from beginning to end as discussed in understanding and embracing RevOps strategies. RevOps data analysis helps you take apart the current customer experience, identifying bottlenecks, pain points, and even website page errors that might be getting in the way.
Between user feedback and analytics, most companies find a variety of both big and small ways to improve the user experience. RevOps strategies will help you identify if your check-out process needs updating, if your product pages are challenging to navigate, or even if your buttons are too small. Each little improvement will also improve your customer experience and therefore, the long-term customer lifecycle success.
HOW REVOPS CAN TURN CX CHALLENGES INTO GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES
In previous models, customer experience challenges were hurdles that got in the way of good marketing. A poor product search feature hinders shoppers from finding what they want. A clunky onboarding process prevents leads from effectively qualifying for follow-ups. But RevOps embraces each CX challenge as an opportunity to grow.
Each time you reveal a new CX challenge to face, get your RevOps team together to strategize a far better improvement. Why stop patching a hole when you can build a new venue for users to enjoy? That search feature can be replaced with an elegant new product search and filter tool. That clunky form can inspire an upgrade to live chatbot interviews or a UI overhaul in how you get in touch with leads.
ARE YOU READY FOR REVOPS TO IMPROVE YOUR CUSTOMER LIFECYCLE
Improving the customer lifecycle is all about understanding your customers and nurturing loyal return patronage. Whether you sell shoes or insurance, a customer who feels nurtured enjoys your website, and trusts that customer service will be helpful is a customer who will return time and time again. Through RevOps, you can improve every aspect of the customer experience, therefore lengthening and improving your overall customer lifecycle.
Are you ready to embrace RevOps and boost your customer loyalty in the long term? So are we! Contact us today to book a consultation on your current and future RevOps strategy.
