A guide for business owners: How to increase your customer loyalty

If you want to solidify your financial foundations and protect your business’ bottom line for years to come, you need to keep your revenue flowing. Should you successfully perform this crucial task, you will have the capacity to invest more money into your company’s ongoing growth and development going forward.

Retaining a steady cashflow is by no means an easy task to undertake. If you are to keep your revenue ticking over, you must go above and beyond to draw consumers at all conceivable points. To achieve this all-important feat, you are going to need to cultivate some serious loyalty amongst your core consumer base.

Do you want to attract clients back to your business time and time again? If so, be sure to heed the following advice.

Here are four things you must do to increase your customer loyalty:

Make customer service a priority

As soon as you start treating customer service like an afterthought, your core consumer base will start to dwindle. Even clients that have been with your company for years will start to disappear if they feel mistreated, undervalued, or brushed aside. It is for this reason that you must make customer service one of your top priorities.

This need not be a particularly difficult or time-consuming task. All you need to do in this instance is respond to your customers in a timely fashion, follow up on recent transactions, and converse with your clients in an emphatic fashion. Seriously, it is that straightforward!

For more advice on what you must do to make customer service a priority, be sure to check out this helpful article on the matter.

Reward your customers

If there are two things that consumers absolutely love, it is getting more for their money and feeling valued. You can achieve both of these crucial feats by simply rewarding your customers for their loyalty.

Here are eight things you can do to reward your most loyal clientele:

1. Whenever your regular customers reach a specific spending target, reward them with a price reduction
2. Create a loyalty scheme in which your consumers earn a point for each purchase that they make
3. Never be afraid to give away free items when loyal customers make multiple purchases at one time
4. Collaborate with other companies in your market/local area to offer reciprocal discounts (discounted memberships at a local gym, free hot drinks at a nearby coffee shop, etc.)
5. Invite your loyal clients to try out your very latest product/service range
6. Host events in which you make announcements, launch new goods, and preview your future plans
7. Wine and dine your most loyal customers during the holiday season
8. Waiver minimum order/delivery costs to customers that provide you with a large chunk of your profit (this is referred to as ‘preferential service’)

Engage your clients on a deeper level

The way in which you communicate with your customers will have a profound impact on the loyalty that they have for your business. Should you continually dismiss your clients or disregard their feelings on a regular basis, it will not be long before they start to feel somewhat alienated. Before you know it, this will result in them aligning themselves with your competitors, which in turn will have a profoundly negative impact on both your brand image and your profit turnover. 

If, on the other hand, you treat your clients with respect and converse with them as individuals, you will showcase the fact that you can be trusted to provide a personal, attentive, and intuitive level of service. Ultimately, this will help you to stand out from the crowd in your market.

Want to showcase the fact that you can be trusted to provide an optimized level of service? If so, you simply must go above and beyond to engage with your clients on a deeper level. There are a whole host of different routes that you can take in this instance, connecting with you consumers via a WhatsApp chat link being one of the most simple yet most effective. Once you share this type of link with your clients, you will open up a direct, hassle-free, and frictionless flow of communication with them. This will aid you in your bid to draw attention to your latest company updates, and it will help you to notify your consumers whenever you offer new deals and discounts. The end result? Your customers will remain in the loop with regard to your business developments, and you will find it easier to engage in consumer support conversations. In the end, everybody wins!

Actively listen to your consumers

Customers do not like to be brushed aside or made to feel insignificant. If you are serious about enhancing your consumer loyalty, you must make a conscious effort to provide each of your clients with a hyper-personalized level of service. Actively listening to your consumers is an easy way perform this crucial task.

When you actively listen to your consumers, you show them that you appreciate their input and value their ideas. This makes them feel respected, which in turn makes them feel like they have an important role to play in your company’s ongoing progression. Ultimately, this enhanced feeling of self-worth will make your clients yearn to play an even bigger role in your business’ future going forward.

To actively listen to your consumers, you must:

1. Provide the speaker with your full and undivided attention
2. Retain eye contact with the speaker at all times
3. Showcase the fact that you are listening by acknowledging the speaker on a regular basis
4. Provide insightful feedback and ask thought-provoking questions
5. Defer your bias and refrain from judging the speaker
6. Do not mentally prepare your response — let the speaker finishing and respond accordingly
7. Summarize the speaker’s comments in a periodical fashion
8. NEVER interrupt with counter arguments
9. Assert your opinions in a timely and respectful manner
10. Be candid and open, and do not forget to smile!