Customer loyalty describes an ongoing emotional relationship between you and your customer, which manifests itself in a customer's willingness to engage with you and buy from you repeatedly over your competitors. Loyalty is the by-product of a customer's positive experience with you and works to build trust. To successfully address all of these activities, in addition to well-developed knowledge base tools to help you retain and sort data, you will also need a reliable system of metrics to track customer retention. A customer who refers a friend is more loyal than one who simply buys once and uses the product.
The customer could be disloyal for other reasons in the future: perhaps they are extremely price sensitive or have a poor service experience. For example, if you are a dog food company, you could partner with a veterinary practice or a pet groomer to offer co-branded offers that are mutually beneficial to your company and your customer. Research shows that 44 per cent of companies continue to focus on customer acquisition, while only 18 per cent have strategies in place to boost retention. Customer service teams that measure customer effort score can have a big impact on reducing friction and increasing customer loyalty.
Improving the net promoter score is a way to establish benchmarks, measure customer loyalty over time and calculate the effects of your loyalty programme. Net Promoter Score measures customer loyalty and provides you with information on how well your products are being received. Start with smaller rewards for all customers in the programme, and then encourage repeat purchases by increasing rewards for each step on the loyalty scale. Another study by Rare Consulting states that 83 per cent of customers say their brand loyalty is due to trust.
Once a customer has made a certain number of purchases, send a notice to review the company and get a special discount. When a customer is loyal to a particular brand, they are not easily swayed by availability or prices. A recent Harris Interactive survey found that customers would pay more if they could be guaranteed superior service. Customer loyalty is a measure of the likelihood of repeat purchases from a company or brand.
With a loyalty programme that rewards customers with monetary or non-monetary gifts, people will feel compelled to keep coming back.
