What is Loyalty?
According to Webster, loyalty implies to faithfulness that is steadfast in the face of any temptation to renounce, desert or betray. Its symptoms are piety, fidelity, allegiance, fealty, devotion
“Loyal customers, they don’t just come back, they don’t simply recommend you, they insist that their friends to do business with you.” – Chip Bell
We are living in an era, where we have enormous options for every single product or service. In such times, are consumers returning to certain brands? As per a study conducted as published by BBC.com around 75% of human beings cheat on a relationship, so its a million-dollar question for any business today, to identify the trend of returning customers and what it implicates about their loyalties. On an average only 22% of the consumers believe, they are brand loyal today and the rest feel free to experiment and explore their options each time.
Be it a salon service or our choice of perfume, we all have our favourites, and we tend to go back and like to have the same user experience every time. This is the essence of customer loyalty towards a brand. There is a relative term not discussed often is Brand Loyalty towards customers which is nothing but customers’ perspective towards the brand over some time. A long-term engagement of brands with their consumers is what determines their respective loyalties.
Today in the era of cut-throat competition and the rise of new brands every day, companies are paying a lot of attention to improve their customer loyalties, and to work in that direction, they have come up with several ways, in which they can increase the customer loyalty and attract them to come back every time.
The next section of the article will discuss dome innovative ideas that companies are coming up with for improving their customer loyalties these days:
Make Customers Feel Special: Today all companies give you reward points and some special benefits for continuously using their product and services. Although only 25 % of them are used yet it makes users feel special and makes them feel extra benefitted by the brand. Birthday discounts or exclusive members-only discounts are popular strategies considered by almost all major brands.
Customer Engagement: Today all companies have aesthetically designed their social media feeds, and they often use them to engage with their customers to get their traction back and make them come back again and again.
Modify the USPs: It is loyalty which acts as a metrics for brands to define their value propositions and formulate USP’s for their respective products and services. Therefore, to maximise loyalty nothing else can replace the ultimate user experience. This is very popular with food and service brands. You go back to McDonald’s and Burger King for their secret taste which is kind of irreplaceable.Trust, trust, and more trust: I can’t focus enough on this bullet as trust is the key to customer loyalty. If you can address their queries, feedback, and concerns and still make them satisfied and happy, you want them. Customers’ decisions are governed by their past experiences for sure and you feel no issues in going back to the same store/restaurant/salon/hotel/products/services etc., if you had a pleasant experience before.
Some Key Takeaways
- Customer retention is always cheaper than new acquisition, hence reduces marketing costs.
- Loyal customers are the most relevant brand ambassadors propagating brand advocacy.
- As we all know that a loyal customer brings another customer, hence driving sales revenue.
Therefore, we can say that though there are challenges in building customer loyalty, but if successfully build then it becomes the single most way to reach scalability and success in business, both in the short and long – term.
