Building Customer Loyalty 101
There will simply be no clear point in spending hundreds of dollars on one strategy after another if you fail to ensure your levels of customer satisfaction throughout every transaction. Fortunately, there are myriad ways in which your business, regardless of size, scope, or industry, to build customer loyalty, so continue reading to discover just that.
Actively Seek Customer Feedback
First, the best way to improve customer retention rates and inspire loyalty in smaller and larger companies is to seek customer feedback actively.
When a customer leaves a positive review of one of the services or products you provide, ask their permission to include it on your official company website and at the top of your social media platforms.
Even if you find a dissatisfied comment or review, instead of simply hoping that subsequent positive ones will overtake the negative ones, engage with the individual who left the review, either privately through a direct message or on the review itself. Negative reviews while troublesome can also offer insight into where you might be going wrong, or need to improve, so take every criticism on board, but not to heart.
Offer Employee Incentives
Another hugely beneficial and surprisingly simple-to-organize way of building customer loyalty and, indeed, at the same time, increasing levels of customer satisfaction is by taking care of your employees and they, in turn, will be dealing happily with your customers.
From bulk Mastercard gift cards to offering specific away days and other practical prizes, employee incentives are a fantastic way to improve employee productivity. When your employees are satisfied with their job, there is a likelihood that they will treat your customers well better than your competitors.
Discover Your CLV
Your overall customer lifetime value (CLV) is a crucial tool to accurately assess how valuable an individual customer or client is to your company based on the history of their working relationship with the business. Working out your customer lifetime value will enable you to glean a more accurate and objective assessment of your target audience.
Analyze Your Affiliate Purchases
One way to seriously focus on building loyalty from your customers while at the same time encouraging new clients and customers to your company, is to analyze your affiliate purchases, both recent and historic.
Affiliate or business relationships are specific connections between your own company and individual marketers looking to earn a commission on a certain sale. If the nature of your own company means you regularly deal with affiliate purchases, looking at the return on each sale will help you decide whether or not said relationship is lucrative enough to continue. Read more on affiliate marketing.
Improve Your Response Time
Finally, the other most important method of building customer loyalty for your business is to improve your response time, both on the phone, via e-mail, and also across your various social media platforms.
In the modern world, the vast majority of people like to search the internet to find the most accurate solution to their problem, the best product to suit their purpose, and the service that is most closely associated with their needs. Timely answers to questions and queries are a fantastic, yet simple, way of letting your customers see how important they are to you and your business.