New Year’s Retailing Resolution: Tips for Boosting Customer Loyalty
We hope that your 2017 is officially off to a great start! To help you out – no matter the current state of your affairs – we’ve compiled a list of our top tips to help boost customer loyalty in 2017. Just consider it a late holiday gift!
Tips for boosting customer service:
- Offer great service. This is a no-brainer. Customer service means a great deal when it comes to customer loyalty. When customers are happy and satisfied, studies show that they spend more. That’s obviously a goal to strive for. In contrast, if a customer feels that their needs are not being met – or if they receive poor service – not only will they tell their friends about it, they may not return.
- Build your community. We spoke about customers telling their friends about the service they receive, and social media is how they’ll most likely do it. Build you social networks and share stories of what’s going on in-store to help engage customers online. Like/share positive experiences shared with you. Create a neighbourhood of happy customers. Ask for reviews (and never ignore the less-than-favourable ones): 72% of consumers say that positive reviews make them trust a local business more and 88% say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
- Invest in your employees. Your employees are the ones you rely on day-to-day to keep customers happy. Encourage and motivate your employees. Invest in training to ensure they are delivering great service. Recognize great work and make sure to address any issues.
- Ask for their input. Requesting customer feedback can give you a great deal of insight into your customers’ wants, needs and pain points. What are they looking for? How are you doing as far as customer service? If you don’t know the answer to these questions, how can you make improvements?
- Consider a loyalty program. Customers love free stuff – that’s a given. Think about how you can recognize customer loyalty by providing ‘more’. Consider this: the average Canadian loyalty program member is enrolled in 11.3 programs, out of which 7.3 are actively used. Make sure your store is on the latter list.
- Be transparent. Be honest. Customer loyalty involves a certain level of trust, and trust is built on honesty. Admit when you’ve made a mistake and attempt to fix it.
- Last, but definitely not least, never forget about your existing customers. Most of the time, retailers, when focussing on boosting customer service, focus primarily on obtaining new customers – but in doing so lose sight of those already loyal. This can be detrimental as those loyal customers will quickly notice their needs are not being catered to and can switch to a retailer willing to look their way.
This year, make boosting customer service a priority. Use these tips to achieve that goal. At Storesupport, we know how important customer loyalty is, and we can help you develop a strategy to capture that loyalty. Call us today at 1 877 421 5081.
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