Customer loyalty is crucial in business, but not every small business is talented at building that loyalty. And the businesses that don’t work on that, are small businesses that don’t grow into a big business.
Provide Value
The most underrated way to obtain customer loyalty is by providing value. Organizations, in my opinion, spend too much time focusing on the perfect product or the best Facebook add and don’t spend nearly enough time thinking about true value.
Providing true value often means going the extra mile. Making sure that your customer not only finds your product or service good but sees you as more than just that company that sells them something. Provide a little something else that makes you truly stand out and helps make your customers’ lives easier.
Engage Regularly
Engagement is crucial for building customer loyalty. Good, active and regular engagement is the sign of a healthy business. Engagement comes in many shapes and forms, but however you decide to engage with your customer or client base you need to make sure you stay on it and grow it.
How do you engage with your fans? Everything from responding to comments on social media, to sending emails that warrant a response and putting personal touches into all your interactions counts. Engage how your customers want you to—if you look closely at how they interact with you, you’ll get an idea about how you can interact best with them.
Collect Additional Information
One way you can build customer loyalty is by adding a personal touch, and you can do that by taking additional personal information like birthdays or anniversaries. Why would you do this? So you can send personal messages, thank yous, celebrations and even special perks.
Sending someone a birthday or anniversary note is a great way to make an impact and show a customer that you’re not a big company that forgets about the small things. Remember that with personal information comes professional responsibility. Make sure you protect your customer’s information!
Always Be Honest
Even when your customer won’t like it. Even if you might lose a sale. Always, always be honest. Companies that aren’t honest suffer in the long term, or at least they don’t spark customer loyalty.
That means if you’re not going to make it, if something happens or you can’t quite do something, you need to tell your customers. It matters.
Consider Feedback
Feedback is crucial when it comes to building and growing a business. It’s a great way to improve your product or service, figure out the problems they need solved or simply find out what they love about you and your product so you can share it with the rest of the world.
You can gather feedback in a lot of ways, but my favorite is doing it in small doses. Instead of setting out a big survey at the end of the year or the quarter, ask for small pieces of regular feedback.
How do you build customer loyalty? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Tae started out as a journalist before following the money into the corporate world. But it turns out that the grass isn’t always greener and now you can find her spending most of her time writing about all the things she loves. Namely, money, travel and business with a hefty dose of self-deprecating humor. She is a podcast fanatic, blogging aficionado and loves to find new ways to turn passions into cold hard cash!