Sunday, April 24, 2016

Building Customer Loyalty Through Quality

Customer experience and loyalty are closely connected, yet brands often find it difficult to integrate them effectively. Serving your customer better does not necessarily mean serving him/her in a more expensive manner. The goal is to ensure that you have aligned your service elements with each and every customer’s need.

Leadership is not aligned. Leadership in your organization needs to be crystal clear on the experience your consumers want and what you are going to offer. That means spending in-depth time with your customers—and the people you would like to be your customers—to understand their needs. You can’t stop with answers like “I want a faster transaction.” You need to know what customers mean by faster and how they expect “faster” to feel. 

There are, however, several common mistakes that businesses make when implementing customer experience plan that can have an impact on the success of their customer loyalty program. The three most common mistakes are outlined below. By avoiding these three pitfalls, your business can increase customer loyalty:

Treating customers unequally: A common mistake businesses make is that they undervalue the loyalty of customers with smaller wallets.We are so focused on driving revenue today that we fail to recognize the potential of tomorrow's revenue generators. High spenders receive the majority of communications and reap most of the program rewards. But customers have different spend potentials as they progress across the life-stage continuum. Young adults typically lack the wallet size of established career people. Though they may have minimal potential today, young adults should not be ignored or alienated. Start building relationships with them now so that when their spend potential grows, you already have their loyalty.

Ignoring your competitors: We always think that we’re better than our competitors, but I can guarantee they are contacting our customers and trying to make them switch. Make sure you are keeping an eye on your competitors and try to ensure your perceived service is better than theirs. 

Ignoring customer feedback:  We can’t learn anything if we don’t take action. If a customer leaves you feedback, make sure you follow up with them and make sure they feel listened to. Use the feedback to create a better experience for all your customers.

Customers don't have to keep buying from you, and they don't have to tell their friends how great your business is. But if you put in the effort to earn their loyalty, that's exactly what they'll do.An ongoing challenge for any company is the retention of customers. It is well known that getting new customers costs much more than maintaining ones already doing business with you. Failure to keep your customers at the center of your strategy will result in wasting time and money languishing in one or more of these loyalty pitfalls. In a tight economy, you can't afford that mistake.

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