The key motivation behind a business is to deliver services to the people and keep your revenue flowing. Customer Loyalty happens when customers give a company repeat business over time.
If you provide great value in your product or service, and the customer experience stays consistently good, then your business will reap the benefits of customer retention.
A Loyal customer can spend 50- 60% more on products and services than new customers. Even though your most loyal customers only make up 20% of your audience, they provide up to 70- 80% of your revenue.
Let’s look at how to develop and put into practice methods for building customer loyalty;
- Determine the best communication channels
Engaging with your customers keeps you fresh in their minds and lets you pass along important information, it’s very important to know which platforms and methods of communication are right for your customers, e.g.
- Email is helpful for specific customers and brands that are not active or present on social media.
- Social Media is the new trend for customers to communicate directly with a brand through direct messaging or even mention their names which will appear in bold, this brings attention to the business in a public setting.
- Web Chat allows for a business to program a chatbox feature that helps to answer frequently asked questions and direct the customer to helpful resources. For instance, if someone is looking for help or a product on your site, they can start a conversation in the chatbox.
- Develop a reward program
The best ways to reward your customer loyalty is to give extra bonus to your most dependable customers. The extra bonus can look different depending on what works best for you and your business, e.g. Point Program is where each purchase a customer makes with your business earns them points. When this point accumulates they can then transfer those points to a reward.
- Offer a head start on rewards
If you want to start a customer loyalty program like drink shops use, whereby customers buy a certain number of drinks to earn a free one, consider giving them a head start. This can be as simple as giving them the first two punches on the drink card for free. If you give your customers a head starts on the program, they’re more likely to stick around and finish it.
- Seek out customer feedback
Seeking customer feedback is one of the biggest keys to improving and retaining customer loyalty. Sending out surveys, asking questions on phone calls, and keeping track of your ratings while asking for as much feedback as you can get will ultimately be very telling in how you can improve your customer service.
In Conclusion, in today’s business climate, it’s impossible to stress just how important customer loyalty is. Customers are people and they understand that brands stand for more than just their products.
By Carolyne Rabut
Content Marketing – CompuLynx
