Creating Customers for Life

Posted on April 8, 2019 Updated on September 4, 2026

The goal for any business, regardless of the products you sell or the services you provide, should be maintaining a satisfied customer base that is loyal to your business. The idea is to create a mutually beneficial relationship that motivates people to keep working with you, even when competitive products or incentives are available (e.g., those pushing for a “Corporate Standard” involving another product).

The best part is that this concept applies to all companies and all Product Life Cycle stages. Whether your company is on a rapid growth trajectory towards ‘Unicorn status,’ or your offerings are mature and viewed as ‘less exciting.’ The approach will also help if your products decline and you seek the ‘longest tail’ possible. At each phase, credible threats from competitors seek to grow by eroding your business.

Several years ago, I was responsible for two product lines in two major geographic regions (Americas and APAC/Japan). Our attrition rate (“churn”) was traditionally slightly below the industry average, and our net revenue rate (NRR), which reflects overall growth by factoring in churn, was around 100, indicating the business was flat. We began seeing an increase in churn and a corresponding decrease in organic growth. Both were indicators that something needed to change.

After discussing tactical approaches, our small leadership team agreed this was a strategic issue we needed to address. The result was an understanding that we needed to create ‘Customers for Life.’

Everyone agreed with the concept, but due to various differences (culture, who our customer was – end customer vs. channel partner, buying patterns, etc.), we agreed to try what was best for each of our regional businesses and share the results and lessons learned.

My approach focused on developing strong relationships that fostered collaboration and ultimately led to growth and success for both parties. The basic premise was simple:

1. People tend to buy from people they like, respect, and trust. Become one of those people for your customers.
2. Helping companies achieve better business outcomes leads to greater success for our customers and us.

How did we do it? It was a systematic process that my team used that included the following:

1. Develop simple profiles for each customer (e.g., products used, date of first purchase, footprint size, usage and payment trends, industry).
   • Estimate their overall impact based on product footprint size, annual spend with us, company size, engagement and interactions, and growth potential. Companies and organizations with the most at stake or the most to gain became our Tier 1 priority. These are the customers that we invested even more time and effort with.
2. Make contact multiple times yearly, not just when you want money.
   • These “out of cycle” contacts became very important for maintaining and growing the relationship.
   • When issues or concerns came up, we often learned about them earlier and addressed them before renewal, which helped expedite the process.
3. Ask questions about key initiatives, milestones, and concerns.
   • We documented the responses, which helped seed following conversations and demonstrate a genuine interest in what they were doing.
   • If we noticed changes in their industry or region, we asked about them and probed whether we could help.
4. Follow-up!
   • Lack of follow-through is the fastest way to lose your customer’s trust and respect. Being reliable and helpful increases your value.
5. Request meetings to understand how they use our products and get a brief update on what our company has been doing.
   • Face-to-face meetings are always preferred, as you tend to learn much more than in remote meetings.
   • Learning more about their business, systems, goals, and challenges creates opportunities to add value and become more of a partner in that customer’s success.
     • Ask “What would it look and feel like when you successfully overcame those challenges and achieved your goals?” and “What is a realistic timeframe for making that happen?” to get the customer emotionally focused on that better future state, and then look for ways to “Weave your value proposition into the fabric of their dreams and goals.“
   • We looked at how they used our products and offered suggestions to do more, do something better or more efficiently, call out potential problems, and discuss best practices. Often, we had a technical expert follow up and provide an hour or two of free assistance to explore those suggestions. We invested in their ongoing success.
6. Look for opportunities to congratulate them.
   • It demonstrates that they are important enough that you are paying attention. Google Alerts made this easy.
7. Regularly ask our customers if there is anything that we could do to help them.
   • They would often reciprocate, leading to increased references and referrals.
   • Helping our install base customers, even if it wasn’t directly related to our products, was good business.
8. Continuous Improvement – Analyze the results and refine the process as needed.

Before the meeting, we would spend an hour or two researching the company, its history, and significant events for it and within its industry, and identify its top 2-3 competitors. My consulting background came in handy as I “looked between the lines” to better understand the situation as we planned the meeting, focusing on what we wanted to walk away with and what we wanted the customer to walk away with. Preparation matters.

As we met with our Customers and Channel Partners, we would explain what ‘Customer for Life’ meant to us and the potential benefits to them. Before the meeting, we would check whether we had (or they wanted) an NDA so they could speak freely and with confidence. Trust was important. The information disclosed helped us understand their situation, and we mapped it against other customers to identify actionable trends. Showing interest and understanding created credibility. Asking relevant questions helped conversations move to substantive issues faster. From there, we focused on specific points that would positively impact that customer.

Over the course of two years, my team and I helped our customers innovate by providing different perspectives and ideas, modernizing (e.g., moving to spatial analytics to get a more granular understanding of their own business, cloud-enabling their systems to increase responsiveness to their business and control costs), improving their systems and growing their businesses, and more. We became their trusted advisors and advocates within our company.

We also received feedback that helped us improve our products and a variety of processes – something that benefited all customers. Occasionally, we learned about problems they were having. We took ownership of the issue, brought in the right people, and helped the customer find a resolution. Collaboration and success created stronger relationships – especially with the largest customers and companies.

The results: Customer churn decreased by 50%, organic growth increased by slightly more than 20%, and NRR increased by over 5%. This program made a several-million-dollar positive impact with relatively little effort. We had achieved our objectives, improved our bottom line, and shared our lessons learned with the other two teams.

The concepts behind Strategic Account Management, Voice of the Customer, Customer Experience, Customer Loyalty, and Customer Success blended into a manageable, practical approach and delivered strong ROI. My biggest lesson learned was that adopting this mindset and creating a repeatable process should be started sooner rather than later – before problems arise.

Every day you are not creating your own ‘Customers for Life,’ there is a good chance that your competition is. Don’t let that happen to your business.