Having customers that are loyal to your brand is the dream. After all, they’ll become the backbone of your business and ensure you have repeat sales.
Studies show that a 5% increase in customer retention can lead to an increase of between 25% and 95% in revenue. It makes sense then that promoting customer loyalty should be on every business’s to-do list.
While there are plenty of ways to improve loyalty, one of the easiest and most successful is ensuring your customer service delivers the best possible experience. Great customer service is the key to establishing long-term customer relationships, and the better your service, the more likely customers are to not only repeat purchases, but to recommend you too.
Keep reading for helpful tips on improving your customer service that will create loyalty.
How To Boost Customer Loyalty
While one-off customers are always welcome, using the following tips can encourage them to become repeat buyers:
Ensure An Easy Customer Journey
One of the best customer service initiatives you can implement is to provide a smooth customer journey.
In e-commerce stores, this means ensuring your site is easy to navigate, that customers can find the products they need and any information pertaining to them, and that the checkout process is simple, secure, and seamless.
In-store customer journeys will rely on attentive and well-trained staff, shelves that are neatly stocked, and short checkout queues.
Create A Customer Loyalty Program
One of the first ideas that usually springs to mind when thinking about retention is customer loyalty programs. These programs reward repeat customers with points, discounts, special offers, and other perks for every purchase.
By rewarding your customers for choosing you, they’ll be more likely to keep coming back if you’ve built a solid brand.
Get Social
It pays to become known as a brand leader and establish your reputation for your customers. The best way to do this is to go where they are. Even better, create a space where your customers want to spend time. This is done predominantly via social channels and by creating profiles on the platforms that your target market spends time on.
You can establish your brand online via these platforms and become a conversation hub where like-minded customers can gather together. Your website could have a forum attached, or you could have a blog that produces high-quality content. Content options such as videos, blogs, or even a podcast perform well across many demographics. This is a good way to entice customers to return and visit your website. While they’re there, they’ll probably pop across to browse your latest products.
Gather Data via Feedback
Customers like it when brands listen to them and feel heard. This is why one of the best customer service practices is asking for regular feedback from clients. Doing so helps to build a solid emotional connection with your core customer base.
Requesting feedback can be done in the form of your staff speaking to them during their checkout in-store. Something such as ‘Did you find everything you were looking for?’. However, the easiest way is to send out an email feedback form or survey, especially if your customers are shopping online.
Incentivize Providing Data and Feedback
If you’re finding it hard to get feedback from customers or the answers they provide are too generic, you’ll need to provide a better experience for them.
One way to incentivize feedback from customers while building loyalty is to make it a competition. You can offer a variety of prizes to make submitting feedback more appealing. This also adds to the customer experience and enhances satisfaction levels.
You can then utilize this feedback to your advantage to ensure that you provide the exact experience your customers are looking for. In turn, this will increase satisfaction and promote loyalty.
Get To Know Your Customer
If you understand how to calculate profit margin, you’ll know that it pays to learn as much as possible about your customers—both the ones you have and the ones you want to attract and retain.
To learn more about your ideal audience, it’s a good idea to do market research on your competitor’s customers. This way, you can see first-hand what your rivals are doing right and where they’re going wrong. You can then use this information to attract those customers as you focus on addressing the issues they have with your competition.
It’s also a good idea to keep any information your customers share with you on file. This can help you to personalize their experience and stay in touch with them. For example, if you have their email address and birth date, you can email them on their birthday and offer them a voucher. This can make them feel valued, and they’ll be more likely to remain loyal as you’ll have set yourself apart from your competitors by showing that you genuinely care.
Implement Referral Programs
A great way to showcase good customer service and gain more loyal customers is by creating a referral program. This allows your core loyal customers to refer friends and family to your business and get rewarded for doing so.
If a friend or family member of theirs signs up, you can award them a token of appreciation. This can be in the form of discount vouchers, points towards a discount, or a cash-back in-store incentive.
Gather Feedback From Customer Service Staff
Customer service staff are the first port of call when it comes to brand success, and they can contribute to customer loyalty too. Your service team usually knows exactly what customers love about your brand. They’ll also be privy to some of the shortfalls and problems customers have encountered. By having your staff bring this information to your attention, you can better tailor your brand to suit your customer needs.
By acting on these points, you’ll establish set customer service expectations for your staff and your customers. This way, you’ll have a happy customer service team who know the value of what they provide and who can properly cater to clients. Ultimately, this creates brand trust and customer loyalty, which is exactly your aim.
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