How do Small Businesses Earn Customer Loyalty?

Customer loyalty is one of the most important factors for sustaining any business. Especially, for small businesses, customer loyalty helps to make them sustainable in the market and drive their business to the next orbit and grow rapidly. Earning the loyalty of a customer is a challenging task in business.

Customer loyalty shows you how much your customers are willing to continue with your business. This loyalty is like a personal connection between your business and the customers.

Customer loyalty also develops the lifetime value of a current customer and leads to in-line revenue. This supports you to bring in new customers by recommending your products and services to others, by word-of-mouth marketing. This also acts as a measure to know your customer’s satisfaction level and how often your customers are purchasing your products or services.

Now, you may wonder, what are the steps to be taken to meet the satisfaction of customers and also earn their loyalty? Let take a look at the following points.

(1) Customer orientation

Getting feedback from customers is vital, be it good or bad, it helps you to adapt, adjust and refine your business based on feedback/reviews. It acts as a guiding measure to improve and maintain customer loyalty. You can get feedback from your customers through online surveys or through phone calls and get to know on how they would like to rate your products and services.

The most familiar way to get feedback is from social media platforms, online reviews, and comments or using google forms. For positive feedback, you can thank them for reviewing your products. The positive comments can be showcased as a part of customer satisfaction to the new leads.

Similarly, for negative feedback, you can apologize and promise to solve their issue as soon as possible. For more negative comments, you can also reply to them in private messages or proceed in emails or direct messaging applications. It’s best to clarify their needs and to serve them with proper needs.

The following quote expresses how much an unsatisfied customer is important

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning” – Bill Gates

(2) Reward Loyalty

Rewarding your customer with cashback offers, discounts, gifts, can greatly help in improving customer loyalty. You can use some specific steps such as for first time commitment, give them an offer of  5% discount and for the consecutive purchases, provide them 10% discount. This would encourage your customers to reach to you again and again for business needs.

Another way to give rewards is using the point procedure. The offers in this way can be provided based on the points they have during the purchase of your products.

Invite customers to try new products for free. Wish them on their birthdays, special days, festivals, etc. through email, messages.

(3) Be respectful at every point

The way you treat and approach your customer is a key element that influences customer loyalty. Maintain your attitude i.e. voice, tone, and language respectively to make a better customer view on your business and make your brand stronger. The customers will reach you repeatedly when you approach them in a good and polite way.

Ask them questions with their permission to gather information. Creating privacy about their information shows your respect and concern towards them. For repeated customers, make them a gold cardholder or silver card holder for your business. This will make the customer feel that they are special to your business.

Respecting customers is a key to customer service excellence. In face-to-face conversation give attention to body language and your expressions. Smile for the things to express your joy and be polite. This can highly help in improving customer loyalty.

(4) Enhance customer convenience

Customer experience is the backbone of customer loyalty. So, make them convenient to experience your products and services. Customers will feel happy when they are satisfied with the purchase and approach you again and again.

For making your customer feel convenient, do some methods, 1-2-3 purchase methods, 1) Give offer, 2) Give complete details of your product for making them to trust about product, 3) Make them purchase your product.

(5) Be transparent

Staying transparent in your business and with your customer can highly aid in building trust in you and your business. This in turn improves your customer’s loyalty. Being honest about your pricing makes you transparent in the eyes of your customer. Transparency is a representation of honesty and integrity in all customer communications. Keep the customers notified about all your products, whether it is in a good stage / not. At another end, if your product is not working, notify them that it is under maintenance. This is a good way to keep transparency.

Leaving a good impression will help in making a customer happy, make them leave a positive review for your company, and it will create and strengthen your customer loyalty. Hope this blog is useful for you learn on how to earn customer loyalty