App Retention: 5 Tools to Retain Users

Do you know why app retention is extremely important? Only 16% of users will try a failing app more than twice, a report by Compuware states. The rest simply delete the mobile application.

Look through app retention metrics and not just download numbers. A small bug or an issue with the app can lead to an uninstall or negative reviews. Don’t equip your users to go public with their views or abandon the app altogether.

When you purchase a product on Amazon and aren’t happy with what gets delivered, Amazon prompts you to first contact the seller and resolve the issue before leaving a negative review. Why does it do that? Simply because it wants to give the merchant an opportunity to delight the customer and proactively offers the customer an opportunity to get their issues resolved.

Building a bug-free app is everyone’s dream, but it usually always remains a dream. Not even the likes of Twitter and Facebook are spared. But that doesn’t mean that your app should go down the path of negative reviews or deletion.

There are tools available that let users report a bug or track an issue right from the app they’re using. These app retention tools not only help you to stay in contact with your users but also document, route, track, resolve and report on customer issues.

Here is a list of 5 such app retention tools that will help you delight and retain your app’s users.

#1 Helpshift

Helpshift is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) service that provides easy in-app customer support, help desk and feedback solution.

Helpshift’s native, searchable FAQs allow users to find answers they are looking for, without ever contacting the support team. This tool also identifies loyal customers and prompt them for 5-star reviews on the app stores and route unhappy customers to providing feedback within the app.

The developers can reply to feedback and support tickets from a central dashboard. This service is available for iOS and Android based apps and claims to reduce attrition by about 40%.

Pricing- 30-day-free trial followed by a Pro plan for $100/month for up to 100,000 monthly active users.

#2 Intercom

Intercom is popularly known as the next generation CRM tool. The idea here is that everyone in your organisation should be able to communicate his/her knowledge to customers when and if it is needed.

The tool allows you to segment employees based on queries coming in like sales-related, marketing-related, product features-related, etc. With Intercom, you can see a list of your customers and their usage activities tracked by events that you can set, engage them through in-app messaging, receive feedback, and provide support.

Targeted emails, in-app notifications, in-app messages, feedback requests can also be auto-triggered by specifying events or goal completion triggers.

Intercom works across all iOS and Android apps.

Pricing- 14-day-free trial followed by minimum $49/month for up to 250 users.

#3 Instabug

Instabug is an in-app feedback and bug tracking tool for beta or live apps on iOS and Android platforms.

It runs in the background, enabling users to instantly send feedback on bugs by just shaking their phones – a natural reaction of the frustrated ones. The shake captures a screenshot, which enables the developers to clearly understand the user’s problem.

The tool will then send a full report on the bug, user’s device information and the trace report of the steps a user took before running into the bug. The tool also notifies the developers whenever the app crashes with same level of detailing.

Pricing- 14-days free trial followed by minimum pricing plan at $19/month for a 5-member team for 4 apps.

#4 Apptentive

Features like in-app surveys, ratings prompts, reviews and messaging are handy with Apptentive’s software kit. Rating prompts is only made to customers who love the app and the ones who are not satisfied are asked for a feedback.

One key feature of this tool is Apptentive’s surveys. They collect both quantitative data and qualitative information and enables a two-way conversations within the app.

The dashboard feature provides key insights about who the customers are, what they care about, and how to talk with them. Apptentive supports native integration with iOS and Android apps and also connects with existing CRM services.

Pricing: 30-day-free trial followed by minimum $49/month for up to 1,00,000 Monthly Active Users.

#5 HipMob

This tool messages users automatically, or chat with them when they need help based on triggers pre-set by you. It also automatically syncs conversation transcripts with other CRM services such as Desk and Zendesk.

The APIs are available for both iOS and Android platforms. Users simply click the ‘chat’ button in the app and get started.

Hipmob has the ability to pick up chats outside the app too by using push notifications. This comes handy when the app crashes or when you want to contact a user after the original chat is over. Hipmob also offers the ability to send audio messages and images to document a problem.

Pricing- A 14-day-free-trial followed by a minimum plan of $10/month.