Main areas covered by customer retention tools
First things first, let’s go over the basics.
Like we alluded to above, customer retention tools are built to cover every aspect of the customer experience. They give businesses (well, more precisely, the people who run them) a holistic view of how to enhance customer satisfaction, improve workflows, and (as a result) increase customer lifetime value (that is, they stick around).
The key? Understanding how these tools help optimize customer interactions, providing data-driven decisions that impact your business.
Want to get to profitability (or if you’re already there, expand your base)? Then you’ll need a product that is as user-friendly as possible.
Let’s break down these areas and the metrics that matter most.
Product experience and customer feedback
Ok, like we said, these tools are built to help you understand your customer experience. One aspect of that is gathering customer feedback and tracking user behavior, which helps you get a clear picture of how customers feel about your product.
Are they happy? What’s driving their behavior?
Key metrics for product experience and customer feedback:
- Net Promoter Score (NPS): Net Promoter Score is a simple way to measure how likely your customers are to recommend your product or service to others. It’s based on a single question: “How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?” Customers answer on a scale from 0 to 10. People who give you a 9 or 10 are your promoters—they love what you're doing. A score of 7 or 8 means they’re neutral, and anyone scoring 6 or below is a detractor, meaning they’re not so happy.
- Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) measures how happy your customers are with a specific experience, like using your mobile app, interacting with support, or going through the checkout process. It’s usually based on a question like “How satisfied were you with [this experience]?” Then customers respond with a rating, often on a scale of 1 to 5.
- Product Adoption Rate: Product Adoption Rate measures how many of your customers are actually using key features of your product. It tracks how quickly new customers start engaging with the important functionality after signing up. Essentially, it shows you how well customers are discovering—and using—what makes your product valuable.
Why is this important? High adoption rates mean your product is meeting customer needs and that your onboarding process is doing its job—people are finding value quickly.
Each of these metrics is invaluable for improving your product, refining messaging, and boosting customer loyalty. Products like Sprig help you capture and analyze user experience data at scale to ensure you’re building a product that consistently meets your customers’ needs and keeps them happy.
Capture experience data at scale via Replays, Heatmaps, Surveys, and Feedback—Sprig AI instantly analyzes all data to uncover trends in your product experience.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
A good CRM centralizes your customer data and interactions, making it easier to understand the customer journey and deliver relevant messaging.
Key metrics for CRM:
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) tells you how much revenue, on average, each customer is worth over the entire time they stick with your business. It’s a key metric because it helps you understand the long-term value of your customers, not just what they spend in a single transaction. If your CLV is high, it means customers are sticking around, making repeat purchases, and generally contributing more to your bottom line.
Why does it matter? CLV gives you a clear picture of which customers are the most valuable to your business.
- Retention Rate: Retention Rate measures the percentage of your existing customers that keep using your product over a specific period. In other words, it tells you how good you are at keeping customers. A high retention rate means people love your product and continue to find value in it. If your retention rate is low, it’s a sign that you’re losing customers to competitors or they’re just not sticking around long enough.
This metric is super important because keeping current customers is way cheaper than acquiring new ones.
- Customer Churn Rate: Customer Churn Rate tracks how many users are leaving your product or service during a given period—and, more importantly, why. It’s the flip side of your retention rate. Understanding why customers churn is crucial. Maybe it’s pricing, maybe they had a bad experience with customer support, or perhaps the product just didn’t meet their needs. Whatever the reason, churn gives you insights into areas that need improvement.
A high churn rate can seriously hurt your business because it means you're constantly losing customers and have to work harder (and spend more) to on customer acquisition.
An effective customer relationship management system also plays a key role in customer retention efforts, helping you streamline processes through automation.
Loyalty programs
Loyalty programs keep loyal customers engaged and motivated to make repeat purchases. These programs are more than just perks; they’re a way to foster long-term customer relationships.
Key metrics for loyalty programs:
- Repeat Purchase Rate: This metric shows how often customers are coming back to buy again. A high repeat purchase rate means your loyalty program is working—customers are returning and making purchases because they see value in your program. It’s a great way to measure how well you’re fostering loyalty and keeping customers engaged.
- Redemption Rate: This tracks how many users are redeeming the rewards you offer. A high redemption rate suggests that your customers find your rewards appealing and easy to use. If the redemption rate is low, it might be time to rethink the rewards or make them more accessible, or associate them with different touchpoints. After all, if customers aren’t redeeming rewards, they’re less likely to feel the benefit of sticking around.
- Customer Engagement Score: his score measures how deeply customers are interacting with your loyalty program. It looks beyond just purchases to see how often customers log in, check their points, or take part in special offers. A high engagement score means your loyalty program is keeping customers active and interested, which is a great sign that it’s adding value to their experience with your brand.
With customizable loyalty programs, you can optimize these efforts to fit the needs of your customer base.
Customer support
Excellent customer support is non-negotiable in the realm of customer retention strategies. It reduces customer churn by solving issues fast, while improving customer satisfaction.
Key metrics for customer support teams:
- First Response Time: This metric tracks how fast your team responds to a customer’s inquiry or support ticket. The sooner they get an initial response, the better their experience. Quick responses make customers feel heard and reassured that their issue is being handled. So, if your first response time is low, it shows you're on top of things and ready to help.
- Resolution Time: This one’s about how long it takes to actually solve a customer’s problem. Speedy resolutions mean your customer success team is efficient, while long delays can lead to frustration. Customers want solutions, not just answers, so closing out support tickets quickly is central to maintaining satisfaction.
- Customer Effort Score (CES): CES measures how easy it is for customers to get their issue resolved. The less effort they have to put in, the better. If customers can quickly find solutions without jumping through hoops, they’re more likely to walk away happy. High effort? That’s where frustration—and even churn—can sneak in.
Platforms like Zendesk streamline the support process through automation (including chatbots), reducing the friction between customers and your support team.
Personalization
Personalization is all about making your customers feel like the experience is tailored just for them. Kind of self-explanatory, right?
But seriously, personalization makes customers feel understood, whether it’s through email campaigns based on exactly what they’ve been looking for, product recommendations, or personalized offers.
Segmentation—breaking your audience into groups based on things like customer behavior, preferences, or purchase history—is key to getting personalization right. By combining behavior analytics with this approach, you can really zero in on what each customer is looking for, improving engagement and driving better results.
Key metrics for personalization:
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): CTR measures how often users engage with your content, whether it’s emails, ads, or pop-ups. A high CTR means your personalized messaging is resonating with the audience—you’re getting them interested enough to take action. That’s a good indicator that your customer segmentation is on point, and you’re reaching the right people with the right message.
- Conversion Rate: CTR is just the start—conversion rate shows how many of those clicks are actually leading to sales (or other desired actions). It’s one thing to get a customer to click, but if you’re an e-commerce brand, then turning that click into a purchase is where the real value lies. A high conversion rate means your personalized content isn’t just engaging—it’s convincing people to take the next step and buy.
- Average Order Value (AOV): AOV tracks how much customers are spending each time they make a purchase. Personalization can help increase this by suggesting products that align with their interests or by offering tailored promotions. When done right, personalization not only boosts engagement but also encourages customers to spend more with each order.
Using tools like ActiveCampaign allows businesses to enhance user experience by personalizing notifications and email marketing campaigns, while automating tasks.
Subscription Management
For SaaS businesses, managing subscriptions is crucial. Platforms like Chargebee offer dunning management and other automation features to handle billing efficiently and reduce churn.
Key metrics for SaaS:
- Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR): MRR is the bread and butter for any subscription-based business. It tells you how much predictable income you’re generating each month. The higher your MRR, the healthier your business. Tracking MRR helps inform predictive analytics. For example, they allow you to spot trends, like when new plans or promotions increase your revenue—and then double-down on what’s working.
- Churn Rate: This metric measures how many customers are unsubscribing. Like we covered earlier, a rising churn rate is a warning sign that something isn’t working, and it’s important to figure out why it’s happening. In this context, reducing churn is key to growing your subscription business.
- Dunning Success Rate: The dunning success rate shows how well you’re recovering failed payments. Sometimes, customers don’t cancel because they’re unhappy—they just forgot to update their credit card info. A strong dunning process helps recover these accounts, reducing involuntary churn and keeping your MRR steady. A high dunning success rate means your system is doing a good job of catching these lapses.
Altogether, effective subscription management tools give you valuable insights into why customers leave and how to retain them.
Onboarding
A smooth onboarding process is the foundation of a strong customer experience. Tools like Userpilot provide in-app guides and customizable templates to help new users get the most out of your product.
Key metrics for onboarding:
- Time to First Value (TTFV): This measures how quickly new users realize the benefit of your product. The shorter the TTFV, the faster customers understand why your product is valuable, which is crucial for keeping them engaged. A great onboarding experience lowers TTFV by guiding users through key features as soon as they sign up.
- User Activation Rate: This tracks how many new customers are engaging with your product’s key features early on. If they’re not using these features, they’re more likely to leave. A high user activation rate shows that your onboarding process is helping users see the value in your product right away, leading to better engagement.
- Retention Rate: Like we covered above, this metric shows how many of your new users are sticking around after their initial experience. If your onboarding is effective, retention rates will be higher, because users will feel confident in navigating your product and achieving their goals.
Good onboarding reduces customer churn and sets the stage for strong customer retention rates.
7 customer retention tools for the complete tech stack
Here’s a breakdown of the best customer retention software for every major area of your business, from customer feedback, to CRM, to loyalty programs (and beyond).
1. Product experience and customer feedback: Sprig
Sprig is all about making sure you know exactly what your customers think, right when it matters most. It helps you gather customer feedback in real-time, so you don’t have to guess about how users feel or what they need. Whether it's through in-app surveys, quick polls, or even customer sentiment analysis, Sprig connects behavior analytics (like heatmaps and session replay) with rich, qualitative feedback data. This combination gives product teams a holistic picture of how users are interacting with their product and where they might be getting stuck or frustrated.
But it’s not just about collecting data—it’s about understanding it. That’s where Sprig’s AI-driven insights and data analysis come in. By analyzing user behavior, feedback, and interactions, Sprig AI uncovers patterns and trends that might not be immediately obvious—and does it at scale.
That means you can fine-tune your product faster, and in a more targeted way, to improve the overall customer experience.
Ask anything about your product—Sprig AI analyzes all of your experience data to uncover product optimizations and generate recommendations.Why Sprig stands out:
- Real-time customer feedback: Get immediate insights into what your users think and feel as they move through your product with Sprig’s continuous feedback collection options.
- Behavior analytics: Understand where users are struggling or excelling so you can make data-driven decisions that improve the customer experience.
- AI-driven analysis: Powerful AI tools help you turn raw data into actionable insights.
- Qualitative meets quantitative: Sprig connects behavioral data with in-depth customer feedback to give you a well-rounded view of the customer journey.
With Sprig, product and customer experience teams can quickly identify what’s working, what’s not, and how to improve. This makes it an essential tool for companies that want to stay in tune with their users and continuously optimize their product based on real and relevant feedback.
When you use Sprig, you’re not just reacting to problems—you’re proactively improving the user experience before issues turn into bigger headaches.
2. Customer Relationship Management: HubSpot
When it comes to managing your relationships with customers, HubSpot is a powerhouse. It combines CRM with marketing automation and sales tools, all in one seamless package. Whether you’re a small business or a larger team, HubSpot offers everything you need to build and nurture lasting relationships with your customers.
One of HubSpot’s biggest strengths is how it helps you streamline workflows. By automating key tasks, from email follow-ups to lead nurturing campaigns, you can save time and effort for where it matters most. Also, HubSpot’s CRM pulls in all your customer data in one place, giving you a complete view of your customer journey. You’ll know exactly where each customer is in the pipeline and what steps are needed to move them closer to a sale.
Why HubSpot stands out:
- All-in-one platform: Combines CRM, marketing, and sales tools in one package, so there’s no need to juggle multiple platforms—it’s an omnichannel communications tool that helps make sure your customers have a consistent experience.
- Streamlined workflows: HubSpot automates repetitive tasks, helping your team focus on building relationships and closing deals.
- Deep integrations: HubSpot connects with tons of other tools, making it easy to manage customer interactions across various channels, from emails to social media.
- Great for small businesses: HubSpot’s CRM is easy to use, scalable, and offers a ton of features for teams that don’t have the resources for more complex systems.
- Customer data insights: Get a complete view of each customer’s journey, from first contact to sale, helping you make more data-driven decisions.
HubSpot also offers deep integrations with other popular platforms, allowing you to pull in data from different tools and create a seamless experience for both your team and your customers.
3. Loyalty programs: Yotpo
Yotpo takes loyalty programs to the next level by blending them with social media. It’s all about keeping your existing customers engaged, turning them into loyal advocates who come back for more. Yotpo makes it easy to build these strong connections by tapping into what your customers are already doing—leaving reviews, sharing experiences, and creating content.
Yotpo’s loyalty programs also offer customizable perks and referrals that keep users excited about earning rewards, redeeming points, and staying engaged with your brand.
Why Yotpo stands out:
- Integrated with social media: Yotpo connects loyalty programs with social platforms, making it easy for customers to share their experiences.
- User-generated content: Leverage customer reviews and content to boost trust and drive repeat purchases.
- Customizable loyalty programs: Tailor rewards and perks to fit your customer base, creating a unique experience for loyal customers.
- Building relationships: Yotpo helps turn customers into advocates, strengthening long-term relationships and increasing customer engagement.
- Social proof in action: Displaying real customer reviews across your channels makes your brand more trustworthy and relatable.
With customizable options, you can tweak your program to meet the unique needs of your customer base. It’s a win-win: your customers feel appreciated, and you get the benefit of repeat purchases and stronger brand loyalty.
4. Customer support and communication: Zendesk
Zendesk is a go-to platform for all things customer support. It’s known for its powerful help desk and ticketing system, which make it easy to manage customer requests without letting anything slip through the cracks. Whether you’re dealing with a high volume of support tickets or just want to ensure customers are getting the help they need, Zendesk’s automation tools can lighten the load.
Through live chat, email, and self-service options, Zendesk makes sure that customer questions are answered as swiftly as possible. Plus, the platform’s automation features can even prioritize more urgent issues, making sure that high-priority problems get resolved first.
Why Zendesk stands out:
- Robust help desk: A solid ticketing system that tracks all customer requests, making sure nothing gets missed.
- Automated workflows: Automation reduces manual tasks, so your team can focus on resolving issues instead of tracking tickets.
- Faster response times: Automation helps route tickets efficiently, meaning customers get quicker responses and resolutions.
- Seamless communication: With integrations across email, chat, and even a knowledge base, customers can get help in the way that’s most convenient for them.
- Customizable support: Zendesk allows you to adjust workflows and automations to fit your team’s specific needs, whether you're a small business or a larger operation.
Zendesk doesn’t just help you respond quickly—it also helps you improve your customer experience by reducing friction at every stage of support.
5. Personalization: ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign makes personalization easy by combining advanced segmentation with powerful marketing automation. It’s all about delivering the right message to the right person at the right time.
The central theme here is segmentation. ActiveCampaign lets you group customers based on their behavior, preferences, or interactions with your brand, so you can craft messages that truly speak to them. Pair that with automation and you’re set—customers receive personalized messaging at key touchpoints in their journey without you having to lift a finger.
It’s like having a marketing assistant that never sleeps, optimizing engagement with existing customers while freeing up your time for bigger projects.
Why ActiveCampaign stands out:
- Advanced segmentation: Easily group customers based on behavior, preferences, and actions to deliver more personalized messages.
- Marketing automation: Set up workflows to automatically send targeted messages at key moments, improving customer engagement without manual effort.
- Email marketing integration: Syncs seamlessly with your email marketing tools to create more effective, automated campaigns.
- Right message, right time: Ensures you’re sending relevant content when it matters most, whether through email, SMS, or social channels.
- Customizable templates: You can quickly create personalized campaigns using pre-built templates, making it user-friendly for teams of all sizes.
ActiveCampaign takes personalization to new heights, ensuring that each customer feels like your messaging is tailored just for them.
6. Subscription Management: Chargebee
For SaaS businesses, Chargebee simplifies subscription management with automated billing solutions that handle everything from invoicing to payments. Its built-in analytics tools give you valuable insights into churn rates, helping you understand why customers leave and how to keep them around.
What makes Chargebee shine is its customizable workflows. You can tailor every part of the subscription process to fit your business, from dunning management (handling failed payments) to subscription upgrades.
Why Chargebee stands out:
- Automated billing: Streamlines invoicing, payments, and dunning management.
- Churn rate tracking: Provides insights into why customers leave and how to reduce churn.
- Customizable workflows: Tailor subscription processes to meet your business needs.
- Scalable solution: Works for small teams and enterprise-level businesses alike.
With Chargebee, you get more than just billing management—you get the tools to reduce churn and create a seamless experience for your customers.
7. Onboarding and User Training: Userpilot
Userpilot offers an all-in-one solution for smooth onboarding and user training, featuring in-app guides and customizable templates. It helps new users engage with key features right from the start, boosting user activation and setting the stage for long-term retention.
The platform makes it easy to tailor the onboarding experience to individual users, ensuring they see value fast. By guiding users through the product in real-time, Userpilot helps keep customers coming back.
Why Userpilot stands out:
- In-app guides: Helps users navigate your product effortlessly.
- Customizable templates: Tailor onboarding experiences to fit user needs.
- Boosts user engagement: Encourages early engagement with key features to drive long-term retention.
- Improves retention: A smooth onboarding process reduces churn and increases user satisfaction.
With Userpilot, you create a personalized onboarding journey that leads to stronger customer retention from Day One.
Optimize your customer retention strategy with the right tools
Customer retention is more than just optimizing customer interactions—it's about building long-lasting relationships (that improve your bottom line).
Whether you're focusing on customer satisfaction, leveraging automations to streamline support, or refining your messaging through personalized experiences, the right customer retention tools can help you deliver a seamless, data-driven customer experience.
With the right tools in your tech stack, you’ll not only reduce churn but also build a loyal customer base that drives consistent growth.