So, what should you consider when it comes to keeping your customers?
1. Be responsive to change
While the public may be used to the breakneck pace of change in the current marketplace, businesses can often find themselves lagging behind. And when it comes to catching up, it can be easy to blindly make changes that lead to frustrated or confused customers who then abandon their relationship with you. So, how can you be truly responsive to the individual needs of your customer base?
- Understanding the nature of the change: First, avoid going in ‘both feet first’.
- Take the time to ask: Is the change right for your business? Does it genuinely address customer concerns? Is it sustainable? And, is it required or just an easy solution?
- Manage your change: When it comes to course-correcting, remember to implement and document smaller, manageable changes rather than making sweeping adjustments. This allows you to save time, energy, and properly analyse how customer needs are being met.
2. Own your social space
For many businesses, social media is the de-facto voice of your organisation. In this case, taking ‘ownership’ means pursuing a hands-on approach that guarantees loyal customers a responsive, informative experience every time they get in touch.
- Settle on your tone: If you make one single change, agree on a shared ‘tone’ and ‘voice’ for all messaging. This will help build recognition with consumers and allow ad-hoc messaging to remain on brand and encourage commitment.
- Give a reason to follow: Providing offers, unique insights, or relevant retweets provide an incentive for consumers to follow and engage. Ensure that your team takes the time to reach out and engage with individuals alongside scheduling the week’s signed off tweets.
3. Deliver a consistent brand experience
When it comes to building trust and loyalty with customers, consistency is key. When individuals know exactly what they’re getting, they can easily start to build their confidence in a product.
So, what steps can you take to ensure a high degree of consistency?
- Confirm your style: Settle on a style that can be readily applied to all facets of the organisation.
- Try to think objectively, asking: How will this be perceived? How will the change be rolled out? How much of a departure is this from our previous branding? And, have we tested the impact this will have on the relationship with our customers?
- Keep up-to-date: Always stay on top of any forthcoming disruptive trends that may come to the marketplace. And when it comes to adopting or incorporating these, always take the time to test and trial; remembering that a change in branding is very costly and difficult to course-correct from.
4. Understand your customer journey
Gaining an appreciation of your customer’s experience with your product or service is commonly overlooked but always essential. This can involve choosing to deploy dedicated UX research, conducting informal site reviews or train members of staff in key design principles.
So, how should you start the process of understanding their journey?
- Consider the future: Remember that changes in technology will have an impact if your consumers consider your platform reliable. Ensure that all elements of your business are ‘future-proofed’ to prevent changes breaking web pages, disrupting supply chains, or making it hard to communicate.
- Test and chase: In-house research only reveals so much. Try to engage with customers in providing dependable feedback and always attempt to keep an open mind when addressing critique. Genuine concerns for customers may be invisible to members of staff who are completely familiar with your service.
5. Consider a reward programme
Customer loyalty should never go unrewarded in the contemporary marketplace. Choosing to opt for a reliable brand loyalty programme can easily work as an additional incentive for individuals to interact with your business.
But if you decide on a dependable award programme, what elements should it contain?
- Construct a two-way street: Award programmes are a great opportunity to ‘double-down’ on a commitment to provide benefits while capturing key information about your customer. This means offering targeted loyalty incentives whilst retaining GDPR compliancy.
- Provide honest value: Loyalty programs work best when customers are offered genuine benefits or discounts in exchange for their trust. This means that it is often worth taking the time to research and quantify what options may prove the most attractive when drawing in customers.
If you need some help finding a creative way to grow a loyal audience get in touch.