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Want to increase your customer loyalty?

Without customers, businesses wouldn’t exist, which is why we should value and respect them. 

Your customers want to feel connected or aligned with your business and once you create this wonderful connection, they are more likely to recommend you to others. Retaining your customers comes down to loyalty and regular communication. And it’s important to pay attention to them and offer not only great customer service, but a total experience. This is commonly referred to as user experience, and for all the geeks out there it’s often shortened to UX. 

Every single day, people are making purchasing decisions based on their own needs, wants and desires. Large companies can spend billions of dollars annually studying what makes consumers tick, and although you might not like it, your every move online is being monitored by Google along with many others to see what you are interested in. 

Studying people’s buying habits isn’t just for the large companies. Small businesses are seeing great success in understanding which post codes their customers come from to shop and then targeting them online. So, without investing thousands of dollars into market research, we have compiled a list below of simple things your business can start doing to increase your customer loyalty, with the aim to ultimately increase sales. 

Communicate regularly
Ensure that customers hear from you throughout the year and not just when they turn up to purchase something. We are in the year 2019 but we still need to remind some businesses out there to gain customers’ email addresses and phone numbers. These critical details will form a database that you can continue to invest time into and craft specific messages that your customers might enjoy. These messages could be highlighting new products or services that you have added, a new model being released, or simply a further chapter to your brand story. 

Do something special 
Do you ever call a customer at random and thank them for their business? Do you ever send them a movie voucher or offer them an added gift with purchase? It’s the little things that can show a customer that you are really grateful for them. It often doesn’t have to be anything expensive, just an acknowledgement. 

Ask for a referral 
The customers you have attracted to your business are part of your tribe. As they say ‘birds of a feather flock together’ so it would be likely that the people your current customers know could also be your customers. Simply asking your customers to refer you to a friend could be a great way to grow your business and also a great time to thank your existing customers. You can share your vision of growth and showcase your plans of creating an even better customer experience. Remember, everyone wants to know “What’s in it for me?”

Have a good team culture 
Customers can ‘feel’ the mood of a business from the moment they enter. So make sure you leave them with a positive lasting impression. Too often people choose to shop elsewhere because of a particular person they dislike or after a bad experience they have had. Trying to lure that person back and convincing them to trust your business again will take time, and money. 

Train your staff 
Ensuring your team are friendly and helpful is one thing, but ensuring they have a good understanding of what they are selling is another. Customers often want information prior to making a purchasing decision, and nusinesses lose sales every day due to poor product knowledge forcing potential customers to shop elsewhere. 

Embrace technology
Customers these days are demanding quick transactions. Don’t hold customers up at the counter with painstaking paperwork. Adopt point of sale (POS) software to enhance their experience and let them get out the door so they can start using their new purchase as soon as possible. 

Be part of the community
The rise of social enterprises can be directly attributed to the changes in customer purchasing decisions. A social enterprise is an organisation whose mission combines revenue growth and profit-making with the need to respect and support its environment and stakeholder network. This includes listening to, investing in, and actively managing the trends that are shaping today’s world. It is an organisation that shoulders its responsibility to be a good citizen (both inside and outside the organisation), serving as a role model for its peers and promoting a high degree of collaboration at every level of the organisation. Being mindful of this emerging trend should be enough encouragement for any business to ensure they are investing back into the community around them. 

Of course, there are a multitude of more things you can do to increase your customer loyalty and remember that it costs us up to seven times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain one you already have. If you create an experience that people want and makes them feel special, then the price won’t matter. 

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