Loyal customers matter a lot in today’s marketing world, and in these competitive markets the whole effort of brands is to make more of their customers loyal. We’ve already talked about why customer loyalty matters, and in this piece we’re only going to look at how you actually build a loyal customer.
Why does a customer become loyal?
To make a customer loyal, you have to go beyond their expectations. Let me give you an example:
Imagine you order an iPhone from a website and you receive exactly what you expected: a healthy, brand-new, sealed phone with a warranty. Was that experience beyond your expectations? Definitely not. Now picture getting an iPhone that didn’t match your expectations, say the wrong color was sent, or it wasn’t sealed, and so on. In that case you’d definitely walk away with a negative experience of that seller and turn into an unhappy customer. Now think about the opposite: at the time of purchase the seller tells you that, as a gift, you can pick a free case and screen protector to be shipped with your phone, and the phone arrives just as expected along with the case and protector. You might think that was an experience beyond expectations, but it isn’t, because you already expected the free case and protector and you got them, and even if that case and protector are low quality, you’ll still probably turn into an unhappy customer. So what actually counts as going beyond a customer’s expectations? Imagine you place your iPhone order, no offer was made to you at all, and when it’s delivered you see that besides the iPhone there’s also a case and screen protector as a gift, along with a thank-you note for your purchase that says: because you bought this phone, we figured you’d need these too, so we sent you a high-quality protector and a case in this year’s most popular color as a gift. And all of this when you had no idea beforehand and didn’t know you were going to receive such a gift. Would you ever forget a buying experience like that? Just like that, you’ve become a loyal customer.
Surprise your customer
To go beyond expectations, you have to be able to surprise the customer, and to surprise them you need to be creative. That surprise can show up in your creative content, your creative products and services, your creative offers, your creative gifts, and a thousand other things. If you can be creative, there’s a good chance you’ll stand out from the rest in the customer’s eyes and they’ll turn into a fan of your brand, even if maybe they’ve never even used it.
How do we make a customer loyal?
Mapping the customer journey and the touchpoints with your business
The first step to building a loyal customer is to map out the customer journey and the points where they come into contact with your business. For example, you might find this article on Google, then head to the free consultation section and fill out the consultation request form, then we call you, and after the free consultation session you decide to buy one of our service packages, and so on. Up to this point you’ve had several touchpoints, like this article page, the free consultation page, the phone call, and the consultation session. At each of these stages there are things you can do, some of which, or all of them together, help build your loyalty.
Deliver better than what you promised
The main point in customer loyalty is that at each customer touchpoint you deliver better than what you promised and what they expect. For example, if you answer direct messages and support requests in under a minute, you’ve definitely gone beyond expectations. Or if I tell you in the consultation form that we’ll call you within an hour but then call you a few minutes later, you’ve probably been pleasantly surprised. In general, your performance in every part should always exceed the promise you make, so you can turn the customer into a loyal one.
Personalization and a unique offer based on data
Another hugely impactful factor is personalization based on data. In that phone-case gift example from the previous section, you created a unique experience for the customer, but you sent them the year’s most popular color, when maybe that color isn’t the customer’s favorite. Now the magic happens when you look at the user’s data and their search history on your website and realize that in the phone cases section they were looking for a bunny doll case but didn’t find one, and instead of the color-of-the-year case you send them a bunny doll case along with a note saying you thought they’d probably love this case! Can you picture the customer’s face while unboxing their order? From that moment on you’re no longer an online phone seller, you’re an angel of dreams.
Think about what comes after the sale
A big part of building customer loyalty has to do with what happens after the sale. Yet most businesses abandon the customer once the sale is done, with their only goal being to sell at any cost. As you saw in the phone example, if the customer’s buying experience falls even a little short of their expectations they turn into an unhappy customer, and even if it matches their expectations it does nothing to turn them into a loyal one; they only become loyal when you go beyond expectations after the purchase. So you need to put your focus on post-purchase processes like product quality, support, follow-up, and so on. For example, imagine you’ve sold a product and the next week you call the customer to ask if they’re satisfied, and if they’re not, you take it back or replace it. With that, you’ve definitely managed to win over an unhappy customer and at the very least moved them from unhappy to neutral.
Conclusion
Building customer loyalty is something that can have a huge impact on improving your brand, and it’s best to use AI, data analytics tools, and the like to try to push customer satisfaction as high as you possibly can.