10 B2B Customer Retention Strategies That Actually Work

1. Send Gifts to VIP Clients

Every business has those repeat customers who support nearly every single product you release. They’re subscribing to your newsletters, spreading word-of-mouth advertising, and helping to increase profits. These are the people you want to make sure remain loyal to you.

Gift-giving is a universal way to show appreciation and gratitude while strengthening the bond you have with another person. This is as true in interpersonal relationships as it is in business relationships.

Luckily, you don’t need to stress about getting your VIP clients the perfect thing. With Goody, all you need is an email or a phone number to send the ultimate gift. Your client can customize certain gifts before accepting them to be delivered straight to their front door.

And if they don’t love it, they can exchange their gift for another one of an equal or lesser price. It’s one of the best ways to personalize your strategy to show clients you care.

2. Use an Automated Rewards Program

While often associated with B2Cmarketing, automated rewards are excellent customer retention programs for B2B companies, too. They encourage customers to continue using your platform. Loyalty programs often reward customers with special discounts, freebies or beta access for using the service a set number of times.

While special incentives are often reserved for first-time customers, a customer loyalty program that offers deals (like for a certain number of purchases) can prove to be an invaluable retention strategy.

Plus, automated referral programs are always an effective way to drive penetration within an account and increase organic growth. (More on that below.)

3. Focus on Quality Customer Service

Providing exceptional customer service is nearly as important as the product itself. Being kind to your clients can make their customer journey feel purposeful.

One study found that approaching situations with assurance, respect, and other positive traits helped improve customer satisfaction, even when they weren’t entirely happy with the product itself.

Some of the most critical aspects of customer support include empathy, adaptability, taking responsibility, patience, and persuasive speaking. When you can master all of these (or at least get a little better), it will only benefit you and your business.

Responding to clients quickly on social media, chat, support tickets, review sites, or similar, is a critical customer retention tactic. Real-time or speedy response times from a support team lead to more sales conversions. Studies show that when a company follow-ups with a potential customer question within an hour, they are seven times more successful than companies that take more than an hour to respond.

4. Surprise Your Customers With Benefits and Gifts

Making customers feel special is an emotional tactic, yet one that is backed up by real-world data. Surprising loyal customers with unexpected benefits and gifts make it known that they mean more to you than just a sale.

Unexpected gifts often carry more value than expected ones because you feel a more intense feeling of happiness or joy than you usually would. Surprises work the dopamine receptors in the brain in different ways from traditional gift-giving — they prove to be even more impactful. So, for example, sending a customer gift in June may get you more relationship “points” than sending it in December, when everyone’s receiving holiday gifts.

Build brand loyalty by gifting your clients with surprise gifts from Goody. It’ll be hard for a customer to want to go elsewhere after receiving thoughtful gifts like cookies from Levain Bakery in NYC or luxury candles from APOTHEKE.

5. Create a B2B Referral Program

Yes, B2B referral programs are an amazing way to generate leads and reduce customer acquisition costs (CAC). Incentivizing referrals (e.g. a credit or bonus for each friend or colleague referred) can super-charge your company's user acquisition, generating active users for free.

But did you know that referral programs are an effective customer retention strategy too? With SaaS and B2B businesses, increasing usage within a company makes your product stickier, more built into processes, and therefore far less likely to churn. So asking your customers to refer their colleagues can not only net you a lot of free users, it can make them collectively less likely to churn.

6. Tune Up Your Customer Onboarding Process

With most B2B companies, the onboarding process involves a contract being signed, an AE handing off the client to an AM, and email invitations to sign in to the service. Maybe there's an onboarding call with the account manager.

Few companies seize this moment, when there is a huge opportunity to make your new clients feel special and appreciated.

If your B2B typical customer has a high size of prize, then you can (and should) spend some budget to go even further. Send a gift box with your company swag to new customers after they’ve signed, or send a celebratory present when they pass some level of product usage. This can help customers feel valued and, therefore, less likely to churn.

7. Reach Out to Existing Customers for Feedback

The customer is always right, which means that when they have feedback, business leaders should listen. Not only can this constructive assistance help you grow your business to new heights, but it can also prove that you truly value your customer’s experiences and want them to influence the process.

Sending out surveys to your customers quarterly can be a great way to gauge customer satisfaction and implement new strategies for the future. You can also ask customers in person to see how they like your services to deepen your relationship directly. After receiving customer feedback, follow-up is an absolute must.

8. Read Your Customer Reviews

In the B2B world, just like B2C, customer reviews are becoming ever more ubiquitous and important. Review sites like G2 and Capterra let users review B2B firms. That’s why sometimes, you might not even need to release direct surveys to gauge customer comments. Reviews are useful for many reasons, but primarily because they can show you exactly what your customers are thinking throughout their journey.

Customers tend to be more honest in reviews because there is a sense of anonymity, so this is where their real opinions are likely to come out. This can be majorly helpful to see where you might have some gaps in your processes to fill in and drive customer loyalty.

If you receive a negative rating, take time to review the pain points. A carefully-worded response (and not a copy-and-paste template) lets customers know they have been heard. Following up on these complaints is an effective customer retention strategy.

9. Turn Bad CXs Into Positive Moments

No matter how effective your retention strategy, you will have upset customers and bad customer experiences.

Yet canny companies will turn their worst mistakes into positive memories. They’ll take ownership, admit fault, and go the extra mile by sending a gift and apology card to the client.

Correcting a mistake with ease and grace can address customer complaints among existing customers without threatening their loyalty. Customer expectations can be met even when something goes wrong as long as you make an effort to fix it as soon as possible.

10. Build a Community Around Your Brand

Customers will return to a brand for a product, but they’ll be the biggest promoters of your brand if you create a sense of community. Studies have found that companies that transition from purely sales to building a community have extraordinary competitive advantages that increase member enthusiasm. Some best-in-class B2B companies, such as Marketo or Notion, have turned engaged communities into a defining competitive advantage.

Plus, members of your business community will feel much more attached to it and be more hesitant to leave, even if the product no longer suits their needs. This leads to a business that is able to generate more value over the long haul.

You can do this by hosting socials or luncheons or allowing members to utilize online platforms like Slack or Discord to connect with the rest of the customer base. Strengthening customer relationships will start to make your business sell itself.