7 Ways to Ensure Customer Loyalty – Part 1
Whether it’s your team of staff managing your customer service or you, there are simple things that you can do to go the extra mile and really encourage customer loyalty. Not only does it help to build your brand, it actually comes and pays you back ten-fold.
Here are a few ways that you can consider tweaking your customer service to encourage long-term loyalty from your buyers.
Feel free to add your own thoughts and ideas in the comment box below this post.
1. Treat Your Best Customers With Respect
I was in a restaurant recently with my family and I witnessed a scene that is becoming typical of frazzled business owners.
Whilst I was queuing to get some more drinks, a lady in front of me asked if she could have a word with the manager. When the manager returned the woman very calmly explained that the service she had received from her waiter had been terrible and that he was unhygienic and rude. She also went on to say that she had been coming to the restaurant for many years and this was the first time she had ever complained but she felt she ought to bring it to the managers attention.
Fair Enough?
I though it sounded fairly reasonable for this lady to discreetly air her concerns but the reply from the manager was quite remarkable. He tore strips of this woman and the whole thing escalated, he started off by suggesting that she was wrong because he personally hired all of the staff and they were highly trained individuals, he took the whole thing as some sort of personal attack and ended up having half of the restaurant hearing this verbal onslaught – a big, big mistake.
The woman quite rightly ended the conversation by saying that she would never return to eat there again and that she would make sure none of her friends would either. The manager told her that he didn’t want people like her in his restaurant and the whole situation seemed to nose-dive into a toe-curling display of playground mentality.
The whole situation could have been avoided if the manager had just taken responsibility. What he should have done is apologised to the woman for the bad customer service she received and either discounted her meal or given it to her for free, the latter being the choice I would have made here. Not only did he lose one of his loyal customers he lost the respect and possible custom of every other diner within earshot. He also lost the friends of the lady that dined there and any further people that she would have recommended the restaurant to.
Had he given her an apology and a free meal, that woman would have been raving about the restaurant to her friends who in turn would have told their friends – and so on. The knock on effect from something like this can be incredibly powerful.
So, rule number 1 is take responsibility for your mistakes whether you personally made them or not. By saying ’sorry’ you are diffusing a situation – even if you feel the customer is wrong. Think twice before letting them know that you are too damn important to need their business!
For the price of that one meal the manager could have increased his business, instead he has probably lost quite a bit.
2. Make Everything Dead Simple
We all want and need simplicity – we’re busy and we don’t have time to jump through hoops. If you want me to be your loyal customer, don’t make me try – I can’t be arsed! Hand me the loyalty card on a plate and I’ll come back but don’t make me beg for it.
Last week I decided to buy some wrapping paper and be a bit more organised for Christmas this year. I tend to buy most stuff online these days as I find it easier and cheaper, so I went along to a very well known site that sells some great Christmassy products.
I must have spent about 30 minutes on there choosing various rolls of paper, tags and ribbon. I then had a mooch about and found some gorgeous Christmas table wear (black with sparkly lime bits – I fancied a theme change) so I decided to buy the whole set. this comprised of a table-cloth, table mats, a runner and napkins. In total the bill came to about £80 and I headed off to the checkout to pay.
I filled out the usual name and address forms and was then taken to page 2 where I was told that they may use a credit agency to check my background – weird, i just wanted to pay in total, I wasn’t opening an account, but I ticked the ‘ok’ box and carried on. On the following page I was faced with a barrage of questions of which I don’t remember them all except the top two, which were ‘Are you a Home Owner?’ and if so ‘How Long Have you Lived There?’
WHAT? Are you Serious?
I want to buy some wrapping paper here – do you need a blood sample too?
They lost the sale – i just do not have the time nor the inclination to fill out utter crap like that! I would have happily given them my card details and paid but I don’t need to give them a full history – I wasn’t opening an account and there was no where on there for me to just hit the ‘no account – pay in full’ button!
How many sales are they losing each day? I dread to think what their cart abandonment rate is like. And do you know what I did later that day? I phoned my mum and bitched about it to her and she has now been put off ordering from them too, I’ve also had a moan to a couple of girlfriends about it and I’m obviously still pissed off because here I am ranting again! What if I named the company in my blog post? What if I went on Twitter and moaned about it too? This is powerful people – don’t make your customers jump through hoops – they don’t like it, you lose the sale and then they go off and bitch about you!
Stand By Your Products or Service
You sell great products right? Or maybe you are service based, in which case your service is second to none? Well, stand by it and give out a good guarantee. If customers know that you are confident enough to offer a long or even lifetime guarantee, they will be more inclined to buy from you. If your service or product is excellent, they won’t ever need to ask for a refund!
“But What if They Do?” I hear you cry….
You have to weigh up the pro’s and cons – but let me lay it out clearly for you.
There will always be the odd p#@s taker who will ask for their money back after 2 months and quote your guarantee back atcha, but in comparison to the larger proportion of loyal buyers you are creating – it pales in comparison.
Lets imagine ten people come to your website one day to make a purchase (let’s hope it’s more than ten, but we’ll go with that for this example). Now, they all kinda want your product but consumers will normally go through the motions of justifying their purchase to themselves. One justification to encourage that purchase is a loooong guarantee. You are so damn confident in your product that you are willing to stand by it. That sheer amount of faith in your own product or service will cement a customers decision to buy because they know that if they are really not happy – you’ll give them their money back, so they are not losing a thing.
Those ten people will happily recommend your product or service to their friends and even if it was only to one other person, that’s another ten people recommending it to another ten people and so on and so on.
For the one or two p@#s takers who decide they are strapped for cash one month and ask for their money back, the new band of loyal customers that have arrived since, will more than make up for the few refunds you find you give out.
(If you’re giving out a lot of refunds – you might want to check the quality of what you are selling).
And don’t forget, not everyone that asks for a refund will be p@#s takers, they may just find that you’re not offering what they need right now, but by giving them their money back in a friendly manner, you are ensuring that they will return and possibly buy a different product or service from you in the future.
Let me give you an example of something that I am doing soon. Over at Web Mums, we are creating numerous online courses for mums to either enhance their online businesses or to get up and running (head over and sign up for an early bird discount 
). The courses are affordable but packed with high quality content that people can use to maximise their businesses – but – we will be offering a 100%, no questions asked, lifetime guarantee!
We’ll be doing it because we want our customers to feel confident in their purchase and we are confident in our products and service. Will we get refunds? Yeah sure, we’ll get a few but at the same time we’ll be building a loyal base of customers and at the end of the day if our customers aren’t happy – then we don’t want to take their money!
So have a look at your systems you have in place for customer service and loyalty and see if there are a few areas where you could maybe offer more. You’ll soon be encouraging a loyal customer base that will buy from you for years and recommend you to all of their friends.
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