Source: https://deskmoz.com/
Let’s say you really, truly understand your business niche. It’s time to focus on what you do best. The next step is finding out who your target customers are. After that, you should answer the question of what the best way to retain them is.
1. Don’t Ignore Feedback
Receiving feedback – positive and negative – from your customers is key to the health and prosperity of your business endeavor. Find out ways to extract feedback from your clients. Use any telephone numbers or email addresses you have and send promotional materials. Yes, most of your calls will be rejected and most of the emails will end up marked as spam, but at least some feedback will come.
Try to figure out whether your business is meeting or exceeding your customers’ expectations. Use the comments you receive on social media to increase your sales by improving your products or your services.
Few companies like negative comments about the business. Don’t take criticism personally, even unconstructive criticism. Instead, try to get to the root of the problem and expose the source of your customers’ displeasure. No business is perfect, so negative feedback is part of your company’s life. Instead of disregarding it, try to learn as much as you can from it, so that your mistakes are not repeated down the road.
Addressing a complaint or a refund request with due diligence shows your customers that their voices are being heard and that you respect them. When their reasonable complaints are honored, their trust in the brand remains unshaken.
2. Respond Fast
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The biggest advantage of social media is that these channels of communication work fast and are easy to use. Social media allow companies to quickly connect with their followers via many platforms. Consumers have been turning to Twitter and Facebook to share their experiences with a given product online for quite some time now. They expect to receive a response from their favorite companies within 24 or 48 hours. Don’t ignore comments – act swiftly.
3. Take Responsibility
As the leader of your business, you’re the one your staff looks up to. To build a strong team, you need to show you appreciate their help while personally shouldering the responsibility for any setbacks that may occur at the same time. Be prepared to go the extra mile – every successful businessperson knows that. This can pay off many times over in the future. It is also an efficient strategy to build trust with your customers and further improve the image of your brand.
4. Train Staff
Source: https://www.phoenixmsl.co.uk/
Front office staff are the heart and soul of your customer service operation. They are the face of your business and, if trained well, their competence will win over hundreds of loyal customers.
You want to make sure these people have the skills to handle and resolve conflicts as they arise, because sometimes new products fail to meet client expectations.
5. Use Customer Loyalty Management Solutions
Creating personalized loyalty campaigns becomes straightforward with certain features, such as:
- Custom events for points collection – award points for any engagement
- Ability to monitor customer reward information in one convenient place
- reminders – remind your customers of loyalty programs and let them see their progress
- rewards, tiers, and redemption – personalize offers with coupon, discount, and gift card incentives
- loyalty analytics – find trends and see how they drive repeat purchases
- omni-channel interaction – connect with customers with any channel and any device
Generating Customer Loyalty
Source: https://www.redpointglobal.com/
Below are a few tips on building customer loyalty:
- Build credibility through customer interactions
- Adopt a multi-channel customer service system
- Deliver added value
- Reward loyalty
- Share positive customer experiences
Creating customer loyalty is not easy because there is so much competition. Yet, there are many benefits of customer loyalty, and it’s a goal worth working toward. Loyal customers can save you out of season, for example. In winter, seaside resorts don’t fare well. If you want your operation open year-round, then you’ve got to find a way to get a bunch of locals hooked to your place. If you run a restaurant, building up loyal clientele is largely in the hands of your cooks. They are the only people who can make your customers come back begging for more deep fried lobster or breaded fish fillets.
If you are new, people will be inclined to come in out of curiosity more than anything else. As the new place in town, locals will be flocking in to you with palates eager to experience an explosion of tastes and flavors that will stay with them for life. To sustain loyalty, make your customers feel at home and offer great value for money, at least in the beginning.
Apart from food quality and presentation, there are, undoubtedly, a number of other factors that come into play when one decides if they should frequent a food place or not. The two that immediately pop up in my mind are price and proximity.
On this note, with few exceptions, the majority of your loyal customers will consist mostly of local guys, who live within a walking distance from your restaurant. Nothing hooks customers stronger than giving them good stuff for their money, coupled with the right attitude, of course.
Speaking of the interior design of your place, the options are practically endless. Common sense dictates that you should, pick up ones that make your customers feel relaxed and at home.
Conclusion
We hope our customer retention ideas have been helpful. Remember, it’s 5 times cheaper to keep an existing customer than gain a new one. Old clients are what helps us survive. Don’t assume people will just keep coming back to you out of habit. This was true, once – decades ago when competition wasn’t what it is now. There was only one store in the neighborhood, the internet did not exist, and choices were limited. Today, this is no longer the case. If they are unsatisfied, a client will walk out, never to return.
