You Can Easily Achieve Brand Loyalty
Customer loyalty is the key to your brand’s success. That’s why companies work so hard to build their brand. It’s all about creating loyal customers. Some companies have a reputation that brings their customers back, again and again. How do they do it? Is your brand true to your customers needs?
That’s a big question. Entire books have been written about this topic. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t have a few tips to get us started in the right direction.
Here is a short list of ideas, some new and some old. You may recognize a few of these, but they are worth hearing again.
You Must Have an Amazing Product
This should be a given. Your product must do what it’s supposed to do, and even more. It doesn’t matter how good your customer service is if your product’s performance does not meet your customer’s expectations.
Your customers have to be confident that they can count on your product, not just your customer support department.
Provide Amazing Customer Service and Support
It should be a given that everyone in your company delivers customer service that meets, and even exceeds your customers’ expectations. If you have a customer support department, you have to provide amazing support.
Most find this obvious, however, it still surprises me how reaching live support can seem to be impossible. Some have even called a poorly run customer service department as your future sales prevention department.
Your company needs to be customer focused rather than operations focused. Providing amazing customer service doesn’t mean you’re delivering over-the-top customer service. It means you’re better than average – even just a little better than average – all of the time!
Tell Your Customers Why You Are Better
Shout it from the rooftops. You have to remind your customers that they made the right decision to do business with you. Just don’t come across as being arrogant. You have to make sure that everyone knows what you do differently than your competition? What differentiates you from your the competition? If it’s something the customer will appreciate, make sure they know about it. Don’t keep your differences a secret.
Your customers must know what makes your company different. Just claiming you have better customer service is something your competitor could easily say. And it might even be true. Do you have a product feature that nobody else offers? That difference may be what gets the customer to buy from you. Your company must exploit what makes them different.
Allow Your Employees to be Great
Focus on creating loyal employees and you’ll create loyal customers. This is a topic that’s close to my heart and central to building your brand credibility and reputation. What happens inside your business is always felt on the outside by the customer. It’s not a coincidence that the best places to work are also the organizations that deliver the best customer service
It doesn’t mean that you are giving up control, it’s about allowing employees to do what they’re great at. There should be a part of everyone’s job that allows them to do what they love to do, exploiting their unique talents along the way. The result is a more engaged workforce that will work for your company, and most important, your customers.
Always Focus on the Next Time
Eventually you want customer loyalty to be about a lifetime. But you need to take it one step at a time. Your immediate goal needs to be about whats attainable today.
Whatever you’re doing, you should ask yourself the key question about customer brand loyalty: “What am I doing now that will bring the customer back the next time they need what we sell?” It’s not about a lifetime. It’s about the next time, every time.
Invest in Technology, but Keep Things Human
Finally we need to address the growing dependence on technology to help our customers. As you invest in new marketing technology, remember to keep things human. More importantly, don’t try and fool people into thinking your robot is a human. We’re getting close to living in Blade Runner, but we’re not quite there yet.
Your Customer Engagement Should Never Feel Artificial
Chatbots, right-time communications, recommendation engines and the like are all transparently programmed. If you intelligently leverage AI, it can help you create great customer experiences. If you rely on AI too heavily, it will make your brand’s customer experience feel artificial.
