Your customers are the most important part of your business, and building customer loyalty is essential for a successful business. It’s worth the effort to ensure they have a great experience in your store. Customers who feel valued and respected are more likely to leave positive reviews, recommend you to their peers, and return to give you more of their business. Here’s how to build customer loyalty for your business!
Points are popular for a reason, and they’re great for building customer loyalty! If every dollar spent equals points they can use to eventually get a great discount, customers won’t mind spending an extra few bucks at your business. Points management systems are a great tool to incentivize customers to spend more money, and it makes them feel good too! Everyone loves a discount. It gives them something to look forward to and makes them feel like they’re working towards something. On top of that, by rewarding your customers for their business, they will feel valued enough to come back.
It’s one thing to have customer profiles, but remembering your customer’s face and name is something entirely different! Sometimes this isn’t realistic, especially if you have a big company or a large number of customers. If this is the case, it is definitely still worth the effort to remember your biggest customers. Some point of sale systems have the useful feature of customer notes, like Oliver POS. This feature lets you or your staff save notes in a customer’s profile to help you remember for the next time they visit your store. Some useful things to note are personal details about your customers that they might have mentioned to you, or perhaps product preferences or product requests. The personal touch will make you stand out among other businesses.
Important customers should be treated as such. While points are a great way to give customers benefits, you should also give some extra exclusive benefits to the select few who keep your business running. Benefits such as early access to sales or new products, or receiving an exclusive newsletter with a code for a great discount. Perhaps you want to give your best customers more flexibility with their payment or return policy. Maybe each individual customer will have their own benefits that cater to what they want! In any case, the better the benefits, the more loyal your customers will be.
An open line of communication with your customers is essential for all businesses. Communicate with your customers as much as you can–if they leave reviews on your site, leave a reply thanking them for the kind review or addressing the issue they had. If they leave a voice message, call back immediately so they don’t have to wait. Additionally, invite your customers to share their experience by giving feedback and leaving reviews. Not only will this make your customers feel more appreciated, but reviews are always a great thing for business. Happier customers lead to more new customers!
Your business can implement all of these tactics, but one of the most basic and fundamental ways to build customer loyalty is to simply have great customer service! Feeling valued and respected is important to everybody, and is going to leave your customers with a positive experience of your store. Transparency, respect, and kindness will go a long way with all your customers.