How do you retain and grow your customer lifetime value in a competitive or saturated market?

One of my favorite interview questions and role playing scenarios for retail associates: 1) Ask them their favorite product: “What’s always in your stash drawer?” 2) Make them sell me their favorite product under one stipulation: “If I can read that information on the box, I don’t care. I want you to give me the intangibles..” The shops and brands that thrive and survive have amazing corporate strategies but I will die on the hill retention is built with our budtenders. Trust and consistency with your front line workers is what builds empires. When you’re customer facing employees are vending machines,you”LL make vending machine returns. Train consultants. Watch retention and profits reflect the investment.

Bringing qual and quant together is a sure fire way to better know your customers. I’ve worked within global insight functions and even there, silos existed and needed to be removed. Building out and leveraging your single customer view will increase understanding of CLV and therefore the ability to increase it too. One key data source that’s often overlooked is that of the Customer Service team. Customer interactions, feedback loops, additional data captured are important signals that influence value.

Few Tips which I believe Segment customers for personalized experiences: Tailor your marketing to specific customer groups. Provide exceptional customer experiences: Deliver excellent service at every touchpoint. Implement a loyalty program: Incentivize repeat purchases and reward loyalty. Personalize marketing efforts: Use customer data to tailor offers and recommendations. Identify upselling and cross-selling opportunities: Suggest complementary or upgraded products. Maintain proactive communication: Stay in touch, address concerns, and share updates. Continuously improve based on customer feedback: Enhance offerings to meet their needs. Seek strategic partnerships: Collaborate with businesses to add value for customers.

MarTech automation supports the drive for consistency. All the leading CRM, ESP and CDP’s include capabilities to ensure personalisation at scale. Buying MarTech is easy. Enabling them to work within a business is hard, because it’s about people, process and importantly, it’s also about the business culture, values and the ‘why’. Activate the whole business to be more customer centric, ensure the right motivational mechanisms are in place. Create more psychological safety. These are areas that help teams then get to the detail of improving customer interactions, therefore satisfaction and value.

In my experience and what I found to be successful is to effectively communicate to your clients. Build a genuine relationship with them and do not treat your clients like a number. I was very successful in cross and up selling to my clients, due to effectively communicated to my clients and I built a genuine relationship. By showing interest in their business and sometimes family life. There were times when all I had to do was email the agreement without having to explain the benefits and cost of the service offerings. Treat people with respect and be honest. Communicate often, even if it is to just ask how they are doing. When you are a genuine honest and caring person, you won’t have to fake it.

While it’s generally good to reward customers, not all customers need to be rewarded with the same generosity. This is where customer research and data comes into play. Rewarding generously is a cost, and therefore must be associated with ROI. In my experience, utilising customer behavioural and transactional data helps unlock meaningful insights here. Which customers are sensitive to discounts, new in, exclusive benefits? Which customers will buy at full price when it suits them? Which customers just love the product or brand and don’t need to be rewarded?

Embrace proactive customer engagement strategies. Anticipate needs, offer personalized solutions. Use AI-driven tools for predictive insights. Predict customer preferences, trends, and behaviors. Customize offerings before customers request. Surprise them with tailored suggestions. Proactive engagement builds loyalty, boosts CLV, and sets you apart in a crowded market. Stay ahead, delight your customers, and keep adapting to their evolving desires for continuous growth.