Some companies start with good monthly sales rates, but with the passage of time, many business owners are surprised by the decrease in sales rates, which may lead to loss or failure, so the work team begins to search for reasons, and in many cases, they may not find a specific reason because everything seems to be what it is. Outwardly fine.
But in many cases, the reason is that the company does not provide any reason to gain or maintain customer loyalty, and therefore it becomes easy for the customer to turn to competitors and may even find it difficult to remember the company.
The decrease in sales here is due to the higher cost of attracting new customers than the cost of retaining existing customers, as Harvard Business School indicated in a report that the high cost of acquiring new customers may make a large number of new customers unprofitable in the first years of work. But then, when gaining customer loyalty, the cost of acquiring a new customer decreases, the volume of purchases increases, and sales begin to generate high returns. An increase in customer retention rates of 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%. Of course, these numbers stunned many managers and business owners.
As a business owner, you must learn and plan well to gain customer loyalty, build relationships with them, and not only attract the customer to complete one purchase but to ensure repeated purchases so that your business continues to develop and excel among competitors. But what exactly do we mean by “customer loyalty”? Let’s find out.
What is customer loyalty?
Customer loyalty is a measure of how likely customers are to repeat purchases of a product or service, or of a customer’s willingness to buy from or work with a brand over and over again. This results from the customer’s desire to repeat the positive experience with the brand or as a result of the value of the products or services and the advantages that he gets from repeating the experience, which makes him prefer your brand over other competitors. Customer loyalty is followed by word-of-mouth marketing, as customers start talking about you to those around them and recommending your brand. Major corporations create a comprehensive program to maintain customer loyalty and ensure that customers choose them over competitors.
Customer loyalty here does not often happen intuitively, but it requires brand owners to do a lot of marketing and practical efforts, through which bridges of trust are built between customers and the brand.
Customer loyalty is also a long-term concept, as it is acquired gradually and over a long period of time, and it requires continued marketing and practical efforts in order to maintain it. Customer loyalty is one of the things that can be lost by any brand that does not do what is necessary to maintain it.
How do you gain customer loyalty?
Before entering into the most important points that you must implement to gain customer loyalty, we must note that the world of building a business is an intertwined world where its steps and elements are linked to each other and success is achieved depending on the different aspects of the business, including:
- Do a good feasibility study for the business.
- Build a strong brand identity.
- Apply the basics of digital marketing.
1. Make customer service a priority.
If customers feel satisfied with their dealings with your brand, they will be sure that they have chosen the right place, and they will return to it again and again. Therefore, study your customer segments well and know what they wish for and what satisfies them so that you can use this information to provide what consumers need and what satisfies them in terms of products, services, and an attractive marketing identity as well, and also to know when, where, and how target customers buy.
Develop specific and previous strategies for dealing with customers, for example: When you talk to customers, will you use titles or the names of the customers themselves? And will you use a formal or friendly way of dealing? Also, make sure that your brand and its details are clear to customers and that this information is also available to your staff. This part also includes building a strong identity for your brand.
2. Taking care of customers
Taking care of customers is a very important concept that contains many details, and here are the most important points that you must follow:
1. Think of ways to make your customers’ lives better or easier while doing business with your brand.
2. Try to keep the customer comfortable at every stage of the buying experience or dealing with you; for example, try to provide a simple procedure for replacing or retrieving goods.
3. Pay attention to the quality of services provided to the customer at different stages of his experience with you, for example, delivery times.
4. Make sure to identify and address weaknesses that may affect customer service, such as the quality of suppliers, and build good relationships with trusted suppliers to help you in crises.
5. Ensure that the product reaches the customer without defects through the final inspection of the product, as well as obtaining customer reports about you and taking them into account; this also applies to services, not just products.
6. Plan well for the trade and business operations of your brand, and you can learn to manage business operations as well, so that you can be sure of obtaining customer satisfaction and comfort during their experience with your brand.
7. Make sure you can meet customer needs and requests before expanding with advertising and promotion. You can, of course, hire additional staff or equipment if necessary, but make sure you plan properly in advance so as not to lose customers’ confidence in you. Always keep the promises you make to consumers.
3. Effective communication with clients
Here are its main points:
- Plan clear steps for ways to communicate with customers and the stages of the customer’s experience with you, as well as post-purchase services. Also, always try to pay attention to the customer’s needs, not just your own.
- Keep customers up to date with what’s new with your brand.
- Make sure to build the belief that you are always available to talk to customers, answer their questions, and help them.
- If your interactions with customers are legally related, be clear and honest about the details.
- You can give your special customers special advantages when they communicate with you, and you can show it to everyone, letting them know that you value them and reinforcing the idea that they are valuable customers.
4. Measuring performance indicators
You must set specific points by which you can measure the quality of your customer service and the extent of your development, and you can use key performance indicators (KPIs), which are measurable values that show the effectiveness of the company or organization in achieving the main goals. It enables you to understand whether the organization is on the right track towards its goals or not, and companies use these indicators to measure various processes to track the path of success with work and ensure that they do not deviate from it.
Depending on the nature of the work and its objectives, the required measures differ from one company to the next and from one business to the next.There are hundreds of performance indicators, but the indicators must be specially prepared for the nature of your work or compatible with it, and they must be developed to help you achieve your goals. So you should also set key performance indicators that you can review to verify the provision of correct customer service to customers and reach your goals so that you can earn customer loyalty; for example, the number of complaints you receive each month, the number of returned merchandise, and how regularly you communicate with customers.
At the end of the article, we will talk about measuring key performance indicators for customer loyalty in general as well.
5. Encourage customer reviews.
The more you know the opinions of customers and communicate with them in direct ways, the more you understand about them and their choices and desires. The following steps can help you understand and approach your customers:
1. Ask customers why they chose you, your services, or a particular product, what they liked about you, and what you could do for them better or make some improvements.
2. Make the means of communication with you easy and clear, and put a phone number or a hotline number so that the customer feels confident and can reach you easily.
3. Get feedback by encouraging customers through social media. Pay attention to customer complaints and encourage them to voice them so that you are aware of what you need to improve. You can also create a complaints form so that every employee who deals with customers can record complaints, opinions, and suggestions. And do not forget to show the follow-up with the customer and mention the name of the employee to the customer so that he feels confident and comfortable in receiving his problem and solving it.
Collect the aforementioned opinions and supplement them with other methods, such as opinion polls, the mailing list, direct communication, and attending events and exhibitions that you believe your customers will attend, so that you are aware of changes in the labor market and customer opinions, as well as the threats and opportunities available, so that you do not lose your customers and are always above their expectations of you.
4. If you have a website, you can also receive contact forms on it. Some companies implement the live chat system on their websites as well.
5. Accept negative opinions, admit the mistake, and take care to correct the problem before it escalates, as the problem may escalate without an actual reason and the customer may stop dealing with you and try to harm your reputation, so pay close attention.
6. Thank customers for their opinions and comments and show interest in them, and tell them if you modified yourself or if you made changes close to their opinions.
7. Communicate with old customers and try to use your skills well to discover the real reason why they stopped buying from you, and always try to find the answers hidden behind their conversation indirectly.
Record everything you gathered from the previous steps in an organized and continuous manner so you can refer to it when taking your steps and amending the complaints you receive.
Read also: How do I become an active learner?
