Your business relies on only one thing when it comes to surviving and thriving in an industry and that is your customers. The bigger the market share a company acquires the more possible it is for them to grow. The problem many companies face is that they don’t know how to retain their customers after peak seasons such as sales and holiday periods. Therefore developing strategies in order to retain your customers and build a loyal customer base should be one of your main goals for this year and most importantly for this decade. When you have loyal customers and a continuously growing customer base you are most likely to drive towards success and expand your business further. Business is reshaping constantly and one of the many things we will see in this upcoming decade will be the transformation of customer experience in order to retain and create loyal customers. So what can a company do in order to keep it’s customers interested in the long-term and what strategies should it follow in order to keep that connection running? Here are a few strategies that can help you answer these questions.
Focus on User Experience
As we said previously customer and user experience will play a massive role in the business of the future. Try to find ways to enhance user experience and make it easier and more convenient for customers to interact, transact and find out about your company and its elements. Most customers are interested in many companies but they seem to dislike the fact that they found it hard to interact with, from completing a transaction, to navigating an app or a shop, to trying to find information about a certain company. Map all steps that are included in your user experience and try to simplify the route your customer follows. Once you do that you will see that customers will prefer coming back to your company instead of one of your competitors.
Don’t forget to Follow-Up
Usually companies and marketing executives believe that follow-up strategies are old school, not worth the time, unnecessary and many more dull things that interestingly enough they are not. Customers want to be cared after and enjoy as part of consuming a product or a service the feature of customer care. Make sure you start implementing follow-up strategies when a purchase has been made either online or offline by a customer. Send a personalised thank you note and engage your customer to come back whenever he feels like it. After all we are all humans and as much a company reminds us of another human we are more likely to go back and say hi. From B2C and B2B the first thing in mind should always be H2H as in Human to Human.
Subscription & Membership Features
In order to retain your customers and keep them loyal you must build a certain connection with them. The easiest and most convenient way to build such a relationship is with Subscriptions & Memberships. Add this feature to your company’s core business and try to intrigue your customers into using it. Offer special packages and special offers for customers that have subscribed or are members. This will make your listed clients feel more valuable than the ones that are not and it will gain your company more reach to already loyal customers. Just try to make sure that you give them good incentives to be come subscribers and members because what adds value to this feature is what differentiates it from the rest.
Related Sales
In an era where we try to pass the message that everyone is the same the truth is that we are all different and we like being treated differently. Personalised marketing is the future. Expose your customers through all channels with personalised related products and services such as the ones they have already searched for, viewed or either purchased. Create to them a feeling of uniqueness and this will lead to loyalty.
Slay your Delivery Services
Finally one of the best strategies a company can follow in order to retain it’s customers is to “slay” when it comes to delivery services. Customers are very interested in fast delivery services and when they experience slow delivery they automatically tend negatively towards buying again from that company. Focus on improving your delivery services and try to make them run as fast as possible, after all that is on of the reasons why Amazon became so big.
When it comes to succeeding in business you must always think of the long-term rather than the short-term. These strategies might seem simple but the truth is that simple is what brings results, not complex. Implement these strategies and help your organisation grow a sustainable, loyal and profitable customer base over the years rather than focusing on gaining as much customers as it can for one and only transaction.
