How to build customer loyalty

Customer Loyalty

Today, we will talk about building customer loyalty to keep customers coming back and grow referral business, reviews, testimonials, and case studies.

Loyal customers can be priceless!

Not only can they help grow your business without the high costs of advertising, but enjoyable relationships can emerge and enrich the lives of yourself, your team, and your customers.

So let’s take a look at 10 tips you can use to help build customer loyalty for your company.

1. Deliver an exceptional customer experience

If you want customers to come back to you and even recommend your business, you’re going to have to provide them with a truly remarkable experience.

Not an experience they expected. A call for duty experience above and beyond.

It starts with truly listening to their needs or desires and then providing the right solution to match.

Don’t sell them what you want to sell. Provide the perfect solution to their need or desire is.

Listen. Ask open-ended questions to get them to dig deep and truly inform you of what their key objectives are.

Then go above and beyond to provide the proper solution.

Be clean and friendly, not fake friendly, and you should genuinely care about your customers.

And so should your entire staff know that the customer is the boss and making them happy is job #1.

Your employees should be fully invested in what you do and for whom. They should be excited to go to work and help your customers.

If you make mistakes, and we all do, no one is perfect. Make it clear to the client that you’ll do everything in your power to make it right.

Invest in your customer experience, ask employees and customers how you can make their experience even better than it was. Let them tell you what would make you exceptional in their eyes.

We go deeper into this point in episode #4, The #1 marketing tip of all time.

2. Stay connected

If you don’t stay connected to your clients, most of them will fade away and forget who you are.

Tools you can use to stay connected are:

• An automated loyalty program
• Service or maintenance agreements or VIP clubs
• An email newsletter

We go deeper on this subject in episode #11, How to grow your business by staying connected.

3. Ask for feedback

Go right to the source and ask customers how you could have improved their experience.

Use an automated reputation management system that asks for feedback and reviews.

Learn from their replies.

Learn from negative feedback and reviews and make adjustments and corrections to your policies and procedures to improve the results.

4. Use a CRM that brings up a caller’s entire work history with you when they call.

Having your customer service representative and service technicians know what works beforehand for the client goes a long way in showing you’re on top of things, understand who they are, and keep good records.

Nobody likes having to repeat why they’re calling to more than one person and nothing impresses them more than knowing their names, work history, contact info, and more when they call you.

5. Use an automated referral program.

Make it fun and reward customers for recommending their friends, family, and associates to your business.

Use a system that lets them choose from either cash rewards, discounts with your company, or gift cards for recommending you to others.

Make it easy for them to share on social media and through email.

6. Have actual human beings answer your phones every time someone calls.

Nothing turns off a customer more than getting a voice mail when they call you.

If you don’t have the staff to make that happen every time, outsource it to a reliable and reputable answering service specializing in your field.

7. Send birthday cards to our customers.

Or send “anniversary” cards that celebrate the day they first did business with you. Send them a gift card to a local restaurant or something similar.

8. Send them special “customer-only offers” on very rare occasions.

These would not be available to anyone else.

Make them feel special.

Don’t flood them with these; that much promotion would backfire on you.

Make them rare, unexpected, and make them special, and let them know it.

9. Build a community on social media.

Share helpful information.

Run contests or giveaways.

Offer sponsorships or scholarships.

Make it fun.

Don’t promote; focus on the growing community.

10. Create a “customer day” BBQ or picnic, maybe a golf tournament or other fun events.

Show your appreciation for your customers.

Alright, I hope that helped some of you. Thanks for sharing your time and attention with us today.

Good luck out there and create a great day!