How to Retain the Best Customers and Employees

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High turnover rates are bad for business. Employee turnover, a concern for organizations of all sizes, refers to employee departures from a company and the act of replacing these employees in a given period. Turnover includes employee losses due to terminations, layoffs, resignations, retirements, moves, and even fatalities. Likewise, customer turnover—also known as customer attrition or customer churn—is described as the loss of customers or clients that can also be consequential to business growth and success.

Regarding staffing, high voluntary turnover rates can force a company to spend more money on finding new talent and vetting, interviewing, hiring, and training the most qualified candidates. Replacing former employees not only takes a lot of money, but it can also be a time-consuming task, lasting anywhere between one month, three months, or longer. Moreover, voluntary turnover can lower the workplace’s morale, as retained employees may have to take on departed employees’ responsibilities that disappear or become more aware that they can pursue other career options elsewhere.

Employee turnover can contribute to customer attrition if the employees that leave are the ones that provided the best customer service or are the ones that customers trusted to provide solutions to their problems. Continually hiring new employees can prevent customers from forming deep relationships with your company. If your clients can’t create connections with your company that increase loyalty, they may feel more inclined to pursue solutions offered by competitors, especially those with better prices.

Retaining your best employees is crucial to your business’ long-term growth and success. Listed below are ways to hire and retain the best talent and ultimately keep the best customers.

Use the best platforms to reach the most talented candidates effectively.

It’s common for employers to post ads and notices about open positions at their business on their company website or job sites. Relying on various job posting sites to help you receive and identify candidates can be futile and ineffective in the hiring process. Instead, consider posting notices of job openings on a top web-based employment marketplace on ziprecruiter.com—the AI-powered site for ZipRecruiter.

ZipRecruiter offers more than typical job boards on the web, as it notifies matching candidates across hundreds of job sites about your job posting and encourages them to apply quickly. Most employers who use ZipRecruiter receive a quality candidate on day one. Consider using a free trial of ZipRecruiter to see how it works before fully committing to it. From there, you can reach, attract, and hire the best candidates.

Keep job descriptions as clear and concise as possible.

When posting a job listing, try to avoid job descriptions composed of long lists of responsibilities that your organization requires of employees, which could overwhelm qualified applicants and deter them from applying. Instead, job listings that describe total benefits packages, the work environment, employees’ work-life balance, and the team hierarchy can be more beneficial to applicants and potential candidates.

Not only can poorly worded and unclear job descriptions mislead job seekers, but listings that lack inclusive language can also prevent the best talent from applying. When describing open positions online, try avoiding words and phrases that some applicants, such as women or people of color, will find challenging to identify with or relate to, as some terms could keep them from applying.

Using inclusive language in job descriptions and the right technological platform can also improve a company’s efforts and commitment to diversity hiring. Diversity recruiting and hiring refer to hiring potential candidates in a way free from biases—conscious biases and unconscious biases—in favor of or against individuals or groups in a candidate pool. This merit-based hiring practice enables businesses and hiring managers to find the most qualified candidates while giving diverse candidates an equal opportunity regardless of their ethnicity, racial or religious background, or sexual orientation.

There are more diverse workforces now than ever across various industries, signifying the importance of workplace diversity. A company with diverse employees is not only responding fairly to society, but it is also making itself more competitive by utilizing and appreciating diverse talent. Diversity hiring begins with the interview process. For this reason, recruiters and hiring managers should consider using an innovative recruiter-created interview platform that seamlessly connects the best employees in your organization to interview candidates.

Ensure your company and employees prioritize customer service.

To guarantee customer retention, make customers feel like they matter to your organization, and keep their preferences at the forefront of your business. Utilizing robust technology can help your customer service representatives quickly reach out to consumers and customers as necessary.

Many businesses in the U.S. may be relying more on their company’s call center and phone system, accepting inbound calls and making outbound calls to customers amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Utilizing Bright Pattern’s one-of-a-kind omnichannel software, for instance, enables businesses to have the best answering services in the industry. The innovative inbound and outbound call center solutions created by Bright Pattern—a leader in providing artificial intelligence (AI)-backed cloud contact center software—can empower businesses to connect and communicate with their customers through phone calls, SMS, live chat, emails, and more. Furthermore, Bright Pattern’s robust technology enables users to integrate online collaboration and communication tools like Microsoft Teams into the platform. A Microsoft Teams call center can equip your employees and staff members to connect and collaborate to offer customers a seamless, positive experience.