Building Customer Loyalty

What Matters to Your Customers

Accurate billing and product specs, prompt service response and on-time delivery are some of the critical values that a customer is expecting from you, especially during the first-time purchase. As a business, striving to meet these minimum requirements leads to satisfaction that can help you gain a repeat customer.

Inside every old customer is a new customer waiting to break out and spend more money with you.
—Murray Raphel

 A loyal customer is someone who makes regular or repeated purchases, refer your products or services to others, and is less likely to be lured by your direct competitors.

Stages of Customers Loyalty

There will be many stages until that buyer becomes a loyal customer.

1. Suspect
• someone who needs your product/service
2. Prospect
• someone who needs what you're selling, and has the ability to buy 
3. First-Time Customer
• someone who has bought once
4. Repeat Customer
• someone who has bought from you twice or more
5. Client
• someone who buys most of what you sell (that you can expect them to buy)
6. Advocate
• someone who buys everything that you sell, and also encourages others to buy from you

Who are Your Best Customers

Some customers are much more valuable than the others. According to statistics, 80% of your revenue is being generated by 20% of your customers. So, find out who are the 20% of your customers and analyze what, when and why they buy.

• How recent or often they buy?
• Which products do they often buy?
• On the average, how much money they spend each time they buy?

Use that data to develop your goods, improve your business processes, and reward your loyal clients.

Encourage Top Spenders to Spend More

It will be very difficult to persuade low-spending customers to increase their purchases, especially if that's the maximum amount they can allot. So, how can we make the sales go up without forcing our low-budget buyers? We can encourage the 20% (our best customers) to buy more. We can initially do this through customer-appreciation programs like seasonal perks and rewards.

• Send them a coupon code to use during their next purchase
• Give away 10% discount for a minimum amount of purchase
• Entitle them to a free sample of a new product when they purchase a certain number of an existing product
• Create complimentary products or packages (results of product A will be much better when used with product B)

Remember, it is much easier to sell to your existing customers than to new prospects.

Keeping Your Best Customers Happy

If your business is growing and you are finally recruiting staff, it is important that everyone is aligned with your vision about customer loyalty. If they are empowered (and rewarded) for providing excellent service to happy customers, they can contribute to building loyal customers.

Hire people with a service mindset — an aspect to good customer service that cannot be easily teach to others. Seek out employees who are naturally helpful and has a genuine desire in doing things well to make people happy.

Get Honest Feedbacks from Customers

Let me tell you the truth about how your company could do better.
—Unhappy customer

Are you afraid of having unhappy and dissatisfied reviews about your products or services? Truth is, those negative remarks could be the steppingstones to improve customer's experience.

Ask them open-ended questions like:

• What else we could have done better to improve your experience (with the service/product)?
• Do you think we are missing something out? What is it?

Do not stop at the surface of the problem. Dig more to find out the root of issues that you need to address to provide a better value to your customers. Fix the concerns and reach out to customers to let them know that you have taken action with regards to their feedback.