How Lumin is helping its customers retain business in 2020

Undoubtedly, coronavirus has made things more difficult for most businesses across the board. With increasing unemployment, market instability and changing governmental regulations, customers are severing ties with businesses they may have been involved with for years. While this casts a gloomy picture, there is also a silver lining. The pandemic and the move to remote working has already caused businesses to upgrade some of their infrastructure and business practices, driving efficiency through the adoption of new technologies and ways of thinking. 

2020 presents the perfect chance to think long and hard about what actually works in terms of keeping customers. Being more effective in this area will not only help businesses to come out the other side of the pandemic intact, but also improve customer relations and increase revenue into the future, when the business landscape regains a semblance of normality. In this blogpost we are going to highlight the strategies that businesses can use to better engage with and retain customers, and then look at how Lumin PDF can be creatively employed to practically support those strategies. While there is no one tool for entrepreneurs and businesses that can do everything, top PDF editors like Lumin can assist with cloud-based documentation storage and the creation and distribution of professional communications, saving time and increasing engagement with your business. 

Ways to increase customer retention

On the internet you can find many articles instructing businesses how to increase retention. They may contain 10, 15 or even 20 different points, but what you probably notice is that most of these points are always centred around one theme; communication. When advising others of the three most important things to look for in property, people often use the clichéd phrase, Location, location, location. In customer retention, most ideas can be boiled down to Communication, communication, communication. Knowing the core focus, we can look at the ways communication can be utilized to better connect with customers and clients.

Lift the veil - If you ever travel to Hungary, you will notice signs in most bars, restaurants and even on the street advertising Unicum. Unicum is the national drink of Hungary, a liqueur with a rich history and distinctive flavour. The oddly-shaped bottle contains a medicinal cross on the front, and due to the recipe’s secret herbal ingredients, many Hungarians believe it to be good for digestion and robust health when drunk after a meal. Why am I mentioning Unicum? Well, at their factory in Budapest they run a tour, where people get to learn about Unicum’s history, see how it is made and stored, and inspect some of the fresh ingredients that go into the liqueur. By interacting with the product at close quarters, people are assured of its authenticity and quality. Wineries and chocolate factories often run similar kinds of tours and there is a lesson to be learnt. 

In running a software company or import/export business, having people traipse through your office would not be fun or ideal, but finding other ways to reveal more about yourself and your operation can foster a greater sense of trust and really show people the kind of hard work that you are doing. When people have a greater understanding of the processes you undertake and the care with which you do your work, they are likely to appreciate what you do for them more, increasing loyalty and attachment to your brand. 

Exude professionalism - You know when you see someone with a nice suit, slicked-back hair and a winning smile, but old and scuffed shoes? You can’t help but feel that something is not right; there is a disconnect between the well-dressed and the scrappy that makes you feel uneasy. You’ve had a glimpse behind the edifice that has been carefully constructed, and you don’t like it. Businesses can be looked at in the same way. Doing most things right but neglecting a small yet vital element can cause a customer to consciously or even subconsciously lose a bit of trust. Professionalism needs to be shown at every turn, not just in your work but in your communications and promotional materials as well. Things like spelling mistakes in agreements or emails, and newsletters with poor quality images can show a lack of attention to deal. Give every task 100% of your concentration and effort. 

Give the opportunity to provide genuine feedback - People like to be asked for their opinion. It makes them feel valued and like they have a stake in whatever business they are interacting with. If you are asking for feedback, make sure you have set up a structure to respond to any comments (both positive and negative), and show that your business has listened to the concerns of the person leaving the feedback. 

If you have ever been dissatisfied with a service, nothing is more galling than taking the time and effort to call or write to a business, only to be fobbed off or ignored. Especially in the age of online reviews, bad word-of-mouth can spread easily, so it is definitely in your best interests to make sure your feedback processes are sound. Businesses can’t be all things to all people and if you make a mistake and receive negative feedback, show sincerity in your response and if possible, try to provide some sort of redress to the consumer. Taking someone’s problem seriously may cause you to be held in even higher esteem than before.

Use different channels for communication - The online sphere has given us so many avenues by which we can connect with customers, strengthening bonds and driving retention. Employing social media, such as Facebook and Instagram is one way. Of course, different countries have different favourite platforms, which is why some research may be necessary. For example, instead of Facebook, in Russia you may want to set up a VKontakte profile. Increasingly businesses are creating channels through messenger services such as WeChat, WhatsApp or Telegram. A newsletter personalised by region, and the tried and true blogpost are other great ways to get your message out to people, increasing familiarity and maintaining relevance. All of these are as important as ever for customer engagement and retention.

Deal with documentation efficiently - This may be the only one that doesn’t come directly under communication, but is vital to keeping customers satisfied. The storage and handling of documentation not only makes your life easier, quick retrieval of information at the customer’s request shows that you are serious, well-organized and most likely have the rest of the organization running just as smoothly. The physical office is becoming less needed as everything moves online. Cloud storage is becoming the standard for maintaining and collaborating on documentation, providing that security is assured. 

How can Lumin help its customers retain business?

So far we have looked at what businesses can do to foster trust, respect and loyalty, but now we are going to look at the how. PDF documents play a vital part in any business, from agreements and contracts to newsletters and fact sheets. The ability to manipulate, store and distribute them easily can greatly assist businesses, which is why PDF editors online are becoming increasingly common. The reason Lumin PDF is so widely used is because it packs all the best PDF tools into one product. Here are the main functionalities Lumin PDF provides:

• Cloud integration and auto-saving - Through integration with Google Drive, OneDrive and Dropbox, documents can be stored on the cloud, rather than on your desktop. This means that no space is taken up on your computer with hundreds of different PDFs. Also, multiple people can access and make changes to the uploaded documents anywhere and on any device, making collaboration simple. Best of all everything is auto-saved so there is no danger of losing any valuable work.
• Editing files - When they want to make edits to PDFs, some people still convert from PDF to Word, jeopardising formatting and necessitating a conversion back to PDF again. With Lumin, you can edit text and images directly in the document. You can also annotate and highlight parts of a text and leave comments for others to see. Edit quickly and easily, without the time-consuming work-arounds. 
• Merge and split PDFs - Looking for the best PDF merger? You don’t have to go further than Lumin PDF. You can merge multiple PDF files with ease, or split one large PDF into separate, smaller documents.
• Unlock PDFs - PDF documents can be locked, meaning editing, copying or printing functionality is removed. By downloading the locked PDF into the Lumin PDF reader, the document can be unlocked in seconds.
• Converting and compressing PDFs - With Lumin PDF, a range of different file types can be converted to PDF. Want to reduce the large file size of a PDF with lots of high-quality graphics? You can also compress files, making storage, uploading and sending of documents easier and less resource intensive.
• Security - You can’t have a cloud-synced online PDF editor without strong security. Lumin PDF employs role-based access control, Transport Layer Security, firewall protection, multi-layer encryption and continuous system auditing to ensure safety for all users. 

Hopefully by now that you can see that Lumin PDF is a great addition to your suite of online business tools. Here are a few scenarios to show exactly how Lumin can help its business clients manage and retain customers satisfactorily. 

Creation of surveys for feedback - There are a few ways a business can garner feedback; either by calling customers directly, having a form structure embedded on one of its website pages, or having a downloadable and fillable PDF form. The upside of having a downloadable form is that it is not just tethered to a specific webpage. It can also be printed and doesn’t need internet access to be able to fill in. With Lumin PDF you can create your own customized feedback form with fillable fields, whether that be for checkboxes or text. On collection, the form can be stored in the cloud and viewed by anyone in the organisation who the feedback pertains to. Comments can be left in certain sections and a collective response compiled. Having this approach will ensure that all feedback is easily retrievable and a well thought-through but also timely response can be provided to the customer’s satisfaction.

Distribution of online newsletters - Say you’ve adopted the distribution of an online newsletter as part of your communicative strategy. You want something that looks professional but is also dynamic and readable. The selling point of PDFs is that they look exactly the same, no matter what device or browser a person is viewing the document on. Your design won’t be wasted and everything will always be displayed, even if someone is looking at your newsletter on an old phone. You can attach high-quality images and videos, add hyperlinks and embed other graphic elements without worrying about a drop in quality when distributed. As with the surveys, cloud-based storage makes joint editing and collaboration easy, and adding sections is no problem with the ability to convert other documents to PDF and merge them. Creating and distributing a quality online newsletter doesn’t have to be so difficult.

Managing documentation the Lumin way - Remember that point about maintaining, editing and retrieving documentation being an important part of your business’ operations? With this PDF tool at your disposal, you will be able to store and retrieve documentation related to customers and clients no matter where you are. Imagine you are preparing a detailed legal agreement for a client. It was originally drafted in Microsoft Word but has been converted to PDF and stored on Google Drive. Suddenly you see a mistake that needs correcting. If you were to edit without a synced PDF editor, the document would convert to Google Docs, completely ruining your formatting, just as if you were to copy some formatted text into Notepad. However, editing the document with Lumin PDF means you can make the required change in seconds, with everything automatically saved. 

Now imagine you’ve been tasked with finding a certain clause in the document and making a change to it. In normal PDF preview mode there is no way to search text, but you don’t want to waste time combing a long and complex document for specific wording so you use Lumin PDF, which employs Optical Character Recognition technology. This converts text in your document into machine-readable format, meaning you can search and copy any text any seconds.

These are just a few ways that Lumin PDF as a tool for business can improve your productivity, efficiency, communication and responsiveness. All these factors make for a better business, and better businesses have the capacity to attend to the needs of their customers with greater care, increasing satisfaction and the likelihood that the customers will stay loyal to your brand. With increased competition and an uncertain landscape due to the Coronavirus pandemic, it is a tough time for businesses. Luckily Lumin PDF, with over 34 million clients, is here to assist everyone, from small and medium-sized businesses to large corporations.