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There’s a saying in the business world: Customer acquisition is an investment, but profitability is built on customer retention. With the economy floundering, it’s more important than ever to keep the customers you have and build customer loyalty.

According to Guy Maser, senior VP of marketing for GlobalSpec, it takes more than a good product or service to ensure a successful customer retention program and foster healthy long-term customer relationships. You must also pay attention to your customers’ needs and meet them. Remember, customers will jump ship given any slight, perceived or real. Maser offers these five tips to help minimize the chances of that happening:

1. Provide stellar customer service. The best businesses make it easy for customers to speak with a service representative — a real person, not an interactive voice response system — who has the authority to resolve issues and make them happy. Unfortunately, some companies see customer service only as a cost center rather than a customer retention initiative or, in the best case, a profit center. A change in perspective can equal a change in service. Make sure your customer service team is trained at cross-selling and up-selling appropriate products and services to customers.

2. Make your Web site a customer self-service center. If your Web site is set up to answer most customer service questions easily and quickly, your call volume and costs will decrease and your customers’ needs will be met. Consider adding a customer-only area to your Web site that provides support information, refund and exchange policies, answers to frequently asked questions, interactive discussions and message boards, and/or click-to-chat functions. Also, make sure your site offers comprehensive, up-to-date product information and special offers just for customers.

3. Create an e-newsletter to communicate with customers. Building customer loyalty for a brand is hard if your customers forget about you. A great way to stay in touch is through an e-newsletter. Although there’s nothing wrong with promoting new products or services to customers, your main objective with this customer retention tactic is to be educational rather than promotional. The communications can include information pulled from white papers or technical papers, links to industry news, and invitations to Webinars.

4. Pick up the phone. Begin an organized effort in your company to call customers at regular intervals, simply to see how they’re doing or if they need anything. A courtesy call can go a long way toward establishing customer loyalty. Sales representatives are ideal candidates to make these calls; just be sure they know who to route calls to within the company should customers require additional assistance.

5. Establish customer-friendly policies. Have you ever been a customer of a company that discontinued a product without continuing to support it? Have you ever faced strict return or exchange policies? Poor warranty support? Those are all surefire ways to send customers fleeing to competitors. An organization focused on customer retention management and loyalty will always realize the consequences of any policies that are not customer friendly.