Customer loyalty means a customer wants to continuously purchase products or engage in services from a specific brand. It builds a lasting connection with clients; having a loyal base of clients ensures a consistent flow of revenue for a business. Moreover, loyal customers are likely to encourage other people to purchase, use or avail themselves of services from their favorite brand.
Entrepreneur states that customer loyalty is related to building a strong brand. When a brand has a strong presence and is well-known, it has more credibility and has more chances of building customer loyalty.
Emotional and Behavioral Loyalty
There are two kinds of customer loyalty: emotional and behavioral loyalty. Often, marketers focus on customer loyalty metrics based on behavioral loyalty. These metrics mainly focus on purchase behaviors, interaction metrics, as well as repurchase and retention rates.
Purchase behaviors include the products purchased by most customers and the location and time related to the purchase. On the other hand, interaction metrics refer to customers’ non-purchase actions. Retention and repurchase rates refer to the number of customers who returned to buy a product or avail a service from the same brand.
However, it is also crucial for marketers to remember that dealing with customers requires coping with emotions. Therefore, marketers must also focus on emotional loyalty. Emotional loyalty includes customer satisfaction, net promoter scores, and sentiment scores.
Sentiment scores are customer feedback in relation to the consumer’s emotional connection with the brand. On the other hand, a net promoter score essentially rates from zero to ten how likely consumers are to recommend a service or product to other people. In general, emotional loyalty metrics measure the purchase decisions people make related to emotions.
Customer satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is measured through five levels:
- Not satisfied
- Slightly satisfied
- Satisfied
- Very satisfied
- Extremely satisfied
The goal is to always get an extremely satisfied rate: it means that a brand has successfully exceeded customer expectations.
Different ways can be done to measure customer satisfaction. It can come from reviews, on-page star ratings, surveys, and customer interviews. Usually, page reviews have a rating system from one to five stars. Surveys, on the other hand, offer concise answers to specific questions. Meanwhile, interviews provide more detailed feedback from customers.
Building customer loyalty
Measuring customer loyalty metrics is only one step in building customer loyalty. Based on information gathered from these metrics, brands can formulate other methods towards increasing customer loyalty.
Customer experience
The overall customer experience is part of building customer loyalty. Part of creating an excellent customer experience is having outstanding customer service. A recent survey reveals that 86% of consumers prefer dealing with a brand with excellent customer service.
Customers remember when they are treated well, starting from when they enter a physical store. Additionally, part of customer experience is making a great impression once they enter the store. It encompasses how a salesperson greets and deals with customers and the look of the store.
Just as the physical store is vital in making a big impression, having a good website is also essential in creating a great customer experience. For this reason, companies may decide to employ website design services to create the best site for their brand.
Personalization
Forbes states that personalization affects the increase in customer loyalty. Not a new concept in marketing, even the world’s richest person in the world, Jeff Bezos, believes in the power of personalization.
Personalization gives customers the feeling that brands see and recognize them. It sends a message to consumers that they are part of a community and encourages them to engage further. Based on research, customers engage more when email messages sent to them are personalized.
Loyalty programs
Loyalty programs are one of the easiest ways of building customer loyalty. By to loyal customers, businesses can retain customers and encourage others to become more faithful to the brand.
There are different reward programs used by various businesses, including point program, spend program, tiered, and exclusive VIP program. A tiered program offers different levels of rewards depending on spending habits. On the other hand, an exclusive VIP program is given to customers willing to pay a fee to gain special offers and discounts.
By using reward systems like these, customers are encouraged to keep purchasing from your brand to reach a certain level or tier in the reward program.
Getting customer feedback
Probably the most crucial step in creating customer loyalty is getting customer feedback. Through feedback, you get to know more about what your consumers feel about your brand, enabling you to improve and offer products and services that will satisfy your customers. Satisfaction retains customers; retention is equivalent to customer loyalty.
