Okuzeka
Sales & Retail vocabulary · Account Management

Customer retention

Meaning in sales & retail, with examples

/ˈkʌstəmər rɪˌtenʃən/nounCommon term

In sales & retail, customer retention means: A company's ability to keep its existing customers buying over time, instead of losing them to competitors.

In Turkish: müşteriyi elde tutma, müşteri devamlılığı

How it is used

Used in account management, retail and subscription businesses. You improve or measure customer retention; the retention rate is the percentage of customers who stay. Keeping a customer usually costs less than winning a new one.

Example sentences

  1. Customer retention went up after we started quarterly business reviews.

  2. The loyalty card is part of our customer retention strategy.

Common collocations

  • improve customer retention
  • retention rate
  • customer retention strategy
  • drive retention
  • churnThe loss of customers who stop buying or cancel their subscription or contract during a period; also the rate at which this happens.
  • renewalThe act of extending a contract or subscription for another period when the current one ends, or the new contract itself.
  • loyalty programA scheme in which regular customers collect points, discounts or rewards when they shop, designed to make them come back.
  • customer lifetime valueThe total revenue or profit a company expects to earn from one customer over the whole time that customer keeps buying from it.
  • account managerA person responsible for looking after a group of existing customers, keeping them happy and finding chances to sell them more.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Account Management

Practise with graded reading

Reading at the right level is the fastest way to make new words stick. Pick free English books by level: