Customer retention in a service company: why customers stay, examples and a five-step plan

What is customer retention?

Customer retention is everything that makes a customer stay with you and come back: they renew their maintenance contract, call you at the next breakdown and recommend you to a colleague. In a service company, it grows out of every visit: a technician who knows the installation, an appointment that is kept, a clear report and an office that can be reached.

Customer retention goes further than satisfaction. A satisfied customer can still leave for a lower price. A loyal customer has reasons to stay: you know their installation, their contract is running, and they know whom to call.

Why customers of a service company leave

A customer rarely leaves after one big mistake. Usually, small things pile up:

• A different face every time. The technician does not know the installation and asks the same questions as last year.
• The history is in somebody’s head. What was replaced at the last breakdown, only the colleague who was there at the time knows.
• The report arrives late. The property manager (syndic) has to pass it on to the co-owners and has nothing to show them.
• Promises slip. “We’ll come on Tuesday” becomes Thursday, and nobody lets the customer know.
• The contract runs out without a conversation. Nobody calls, and in the meantime the customer asks another firm for quotes.

With business customers, this weighs more heavily. A property manager, a syndic or a facility manager has to account for things themselves, to the owners, the management or an auditor. A supplier who helps them do that is one they keep.

Why customers stay: six things you control

How to keep the contracts on schedule is explained in tracking maintenance contracts. What goes into a good report is explained in the intervention report to the customer.

Customer retention: examples for each moment of the customer relationship

The first visit

• Confirm the appointment in writing, with the time window and what the customer needs to arrange.
• Have the technician introduce themselves and say whom the customer can call from now on.
• Record the installation in full: brand, type, serial number and a photo of the rating plate.

After a breakdown

• When the breakdown is reported, say when someone will come, and stick to it.
• Call the customer a few days after the repair to hear whether everything still works.
• If the breakdown comes back, treat it as a complaint, with one person responsible and a deadline. See handling complaints.

The annual maintenance

• Send the same technician as last year, or put in the instructions what their colleague needs to know.
• Mention in the report what is coming up in the next few years, such as a wear part or the end of the warranty.
• Give the property manager or the facility manager the reports for all their buildings in one place, for example in a customer portal.

The contract renewal

• Call well before the end, at a fixed moment, and go through the year together: the visits, the breakdowns and what you recommend.
• Ask what could be done better, and write down the answer.
• Confirm the renewal in writing, with anything that changes.

If your contracts include tacit renewal or a notice period, have those clauses checked by your legal adviser, especially if the customer is a consumer.

Measuring customer retention: indicators to track

These figures are indicators to track over time, not standards. Compare them with your own previous periods.

Look at the figures per segment, for example property managers, businesses and private customers: an average hides where things go wrong. How to measure satisfaction itself is explained in measuring customer satisfaction.

A customer retention strategy in five steps

1. Choose which customers you want to keep. Make a list of your contract customers and of those who give you work regularly, with the segment, the installations and who decides on the contract.
2. Give every customer a fixed point of contact. At the office, one person who knows the customer, and where possible the same technician.
3. Set down what the customer gets at each moment. A confirmation, a reminder, the report on the same day, a phone call after a breakdown. Write it on one page, so that it does not depend on one person.
4. Call every contract customer before the renewal. Choose a fixed moment, for example two months before the end, and speak to the person who decides.
5. Measure, and discuss it every quarter. The renewals, the cancelled contracts with their reason, the complaints and the answers to your satisfaction question. Choose one point to improve.

An example: a heating company and a property manager

A heating company maintains the communal boilers of six apartment buildings for the same property manager (syndic), with an annual contract per building. Last year, three different technicians visited, and the property manager asked twice for a report for the co-owners.

The managing director decides that one technician will maintain all the buildings of this property manager. If he is away, his colleague reads the boiler’s history and the access instructions. The office manager becomes the fixed point of contact, and the technician sends the report after every visit.

Two months before the contracts expire, the office manager calls the property manager. They go through the year: the maintenance visits, a breakdown and the advice to replace a circulation pump. The property manager asks for the visits to be scheduled outside the school holidays. That goes into the instructions of the contracts, and the renewal is confirmed in writing.

How it works in Digitalnatie Service Suite

• Maintenance contracts: a contract has a frequency, a visit template and, if you like, a regular technician. Once a day, Service Suite creates the intervention for every active contract whose next visit is due, with the contract’s technician if there is one.
• Renewal: the contracts screen has a tab with the contracts to renew, which shows the contracts that end within 60 days, and a tab with the overdue visits that have not yet taken place. When you renew a contract, you choose a new next visit and a new end date.
• The customer file: the header shows the account manager, the last visit and the next visit, and key figures such as overdue maintenance and warranties that are expiring. You write an internal note in the timeline of the file, for example the notes from the renewal conversation. Each contact person has their job title.
• The installation: its file brings together, among other things, its interventions, its maintenance history, its breakdowns and its documents.
• The report: the technician fills in the work done, the problem found and the solution, with remarks for the customer kept separate from the internal notes. Sending the report emails it to the customer.
• The customer portal: an invited contact person sees their upcoming interventions, the reports as PDFs and their installations, and reports a problem there.
• Appointment reminder: in the automations, the administrator builds a rule from the template for an intervention reminder. When the appointment approaches, an appointment reminder goes to the customer by email.

Good to know:

• In the app, a technician only sees their own previous interventions on an installation. What they need to know from the history, the office puts in the instructions.
• A completed intervention does not automatically move the installation’s next maintenance date.
• The automations have no trigger for a contract that is expiring, and Service Suite does not send a satisfaction survey. You schedule the renewal call yourself, from the list of contracts to renew.
• A contract has no price of its own: the annual price is the same for all active contracts.
• Reports by email, portal invitations and reminders are only sent once your organisation’s email account is connected. For the reminders, sending emails to customers must also be allowed, a setting you ask Digitalnatie to switch on. Only your organisation’s administrator gives access to the portal.

Everything about a customer, from contact persons to invoices, is together in the customer file.

Frequently asked questions

What does customer retention mean?

Customer retention means that a customer stays with you and comes back, even when a competitor comes along. In a service company, it grows out of a running maintenance contract, a technician who knows the installation, appointments that are kept, a clear report and an office that can be reached.

What are examples of customer retention in a service company?

The same technician at every maintenance visit, a reminder the day before the visit, the report on the same day, a phone call a few days after a repair, and a conversation about the past year before the contract runs out. For a property manager or a facility manager, add a fixed point of contact at the office.

How do you measure customer retention?

Track the share of renewed maintenance contracts, the cancelled contracts with their reason and the share of customers who give you work again. Compare with your own previous periods, per segment. A question about satisfaction or recommendation complements those figures.

What is the difference between customer retention and customer satisfaction?

Customer satisfaction tells you how a customer experienced a visit or a year of working together. Customer retention is what follows from it in the longer term: do they stay, do they renew, do they come back? A satisfied customer can still leave for a lower price, which is why you track both.

Does Service Suite notify me when a maintenance contract is about to expire?

The list of contracts to renew, in the maintenance screen, shows the contracts that end within 60 days. Service Suite does not contact the customer about it itself: you have the renewal conversation, and then you renew the contract to record the next visit and the new end date.