One thing that will always be important for improving customer loyalty is the loyalty program, a way for companies to maintain their business with regular customers and continue to build trust. A good loyalty program could build dedication of customers towards buying products or services from your business. As customer is one of the main drivers of your business growth, it’s quite important to concentrate efforts on building your customer loyalty.
No matter how long customers may have had a relationship with your company, they are more likely to jump to your competitors when they become dissatisfied with your current services. By implementing a digital transformation, your company can better understand and connect with your customers with a valid & better reasoning.
Here are a few things you can do to revamp the customer loyalty program in the digital era:
1. Make use of your customers’ data
Analyzing the data that your customer leaves is considered customer analytics. With the usage of data analytics and analyzing the buying patterns, as well as preferences of customers, businesses have a picture regarding what kind of campaigns and rewards will be appreciated by the customer whether your customer is B2C or B2B.
Always keep an eye on the most popular products or services of your business but do not hesitate to analyze them in more details. Start analyzing which products are in more demand during which seasons or on which holidays, and make your advertising campaigns and offers more personalized.
Even despite the increasing concerns over collecting customer information, with an appropriate and ethical collection of data, your business will have a better strategy for maintaining customer loyalty with more satisfied customers. Make sure you comply to your national & international law regarding the activity.
2. Your customers’ experiences really matter
The outcome of digital transformation can be seen from changes in modern customer loyalty. Quality and price of products or services can be the reasons why a customer chooses one company over another. However, customer experience is the most important aspect in his or her decision.
The following are several specific areas that you need to improve as they have the largest impact on loyalty:
a. Smooth access to your service
Customers should have quick and easy access to reach your company’s services whenever and wherever they want. Of course, customers expect to find and receive your services without delays or complications. Making your services easily accessible can give a big difference during a potential customer’s undecided choice between your company or a competitor.
An existing customer will go to you first due to his/her pre-existing loyalty. However, if this customer cannot quickly find/receive the services he/she wants from your company, this will easily send him/her to your competitor. Implementing omnichannel experiences in your services could be a consideration to do where customers can interact easily and quickly with you in person or by online in both desktop and mobile.
b. Helpful customer service
The most memorable interactions between a business and its customers come from the field of customer service. Good customer service prevents customers from leaving your business. It also reinforces that your company cares about them.
Customer service plays an important role in representing your brand. You’ll gain a major positive effect on customer loyalty if you are successful in demonstrating your advanced level in the customer service field.
3. Create differentiation on your brand identity
Customers will tie your brand to the customer experience you provide. A great experience makes customers attach positive feelings to your brand. The same thing goes to the poor experiences your customers received. They will also tie this to your brand. Good experiences do not only give customers a positive memory but also improve brand awareness.
One way to make your brand stand out is by being original. Imitating competitor’s brand is not a good choice. It would be better if you can create an angle that people haven’t found anywhere. Developing an image or voice that are genuinely your own can make your brand different among others. Being original also creates an opportunity to build an emotional connection with your customers.
Customers’ emotional connection with a brand has a very big influence on loyalty. If you can cultivate that emotional connection into positive, this will result in loyalty for both short and long term. Having a positive emotional tie will help your brand less replaceable to clients and distinguishable from the crowd.
4. Social media for social interactions
Nowadays, customers express their feelings regarding a business, both negative and positive, on social media. If something goes wrong, ask for details and do your best to make it up for the customer.
If the feedback is positive, go beyond traditional thank-you comments and ask them more about their personal thoughts about the product. Such actions shall contribute to improving customer loyalty.
Conclusion
To sum up, for achieving better customer loyalty in the digital age, implementing innovative solutions can be a consideration. Sometimes it means taking the funds from other projects to finance innovations.
And, most of the times innovation go beyond tangible benefits and bring more intangible ones such as added-value, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, etc. that are more valuable, especially today.
If you need any consultation and help to revamp your customer loyalty program, feel free to contact us. WGS is an enterprise software solution company with a mission to strengthen our client’s IT capacity and capabilities, automate business processes, and allow innovation through technology. Contact WGS for more information about strategies to revamp customer loyalty program in the digital era that is suitable with your niche of business.