Customer Loyalty – How do you get it?

In business, you can never stand still. In today’s markets, customers know they have choice and the ability to change suppliers and find new ones has never been easier. So retaining customers has never been more important. We’ve got a few tips that will hopefully propel your business to greater heights.

There is an often quoted statistic from the Ford motor group:

No, this is not to say Ford are expecting their customers to pay that much for their cars. But when you factor in the cost of advertising, sales and after sales support. A retained customer costs far less in all aspects than a new or prospective customer.

So, clearly big business know the benefits of loyaland retained customers. So, it makes sense the SMB’s should be following this process too. The reality is, that is not that difficult to do. The hard part of winning the customer has been, done now keeping them happy should be straight forward. But, as I’m sure we all have experience of swapping energy providers or broadband providers some companies are better at it than others.

As we’re all customers of someone, running your own loyalty campaign should be straight forward shouldn’t it? Just using some commence sense, but to get the most out of your customer retention strategy you may need to consider multiple resources.

Firstly, you need a decent CRM solution. This is probably the cornerstone of your customer retention strategy. Recording your customers’ details, important dates e.g. birthday’s, telephone and email discussions. Building up a profile of your customer then lets you start to marketing directly to them. For example, using CRM to note that the like to watch live football, you can send out a promo to win match day tickets to a game of their choice, perhaps depending on how much they spend with you over a month.

There is no shame in copying what others have done. Tesco’s club card (A large UK supermarket) is perhaps the best example of a customer loyalty programme and  easily replicated. There are low cost loyalty card schemes such as loyaltypro or loyaltyspace rewarding customers each time they shop with you. In a highly competitive industry, these additional benefits are what will separate you from your competition and ensure that customer keep coming back. Loyalty schemes also add a personal touch to your business, customers feel connected when promotions are tailored to their needs and the loyalty card has their details on it with your branding.

As well as rewarding customer for spend, loyalty programmes give you the opportunity to analyse trends within customer spend. An order processing system, linked into your CRM will give you analysis on when you customer buy, how much and what they’re buying. This information can be critical in streamlining your promotions e.g. your customers may have budget to spend before year end. If your sales analysis spots this trend and their year end is flagged in your CRM system, you can devise a promotion to co-inside with this date and hopefully encourage them to spend their remaining budget with you.

The whole process of any business is to add value for the customer. Adding more value will encourage them to keeping using your products or services. Burwell IT offer a free quarterly health check for our business customers. This means we visit our customers’ site, verify all the systems are operational as expected, undertake any patching, virus scans and security checks. This is of benefit to the customer, as the service is free and it gives a level of comfort that systems are operational. As a supplier, we ensure that the customer is happy and we’re not going to get a 2am call out for a downed system that could have been prevented. In addition, the health check gives your business personal contact with the customer. Often, additional requirements and add-on sales can be gained as the customer has you onsite and can discuss projects they may have planned. Looking after the customer is paramount, as if you aren’t making regular contact someone else will.

Finally, one of the big benefits of customer retention is great ‘word of mouth’. This is the kind of advertising money can’t buy and it is probably the most effective. Nothing validates you more in the eyes of a new customer than someone else they know who recommends you. This strategy has a number of parts, firstly and most importantly you have to offer good service. Without this, no one will recommend you. Once you are offering 110%, start to reach out to your customers about a referral scheme. Run a promotion, that encourages them to suggest a friend or business that could use your services. Reward the referral, with loyalty points, or free product or service. Finally, publicise this process either with putting referrals and testimonials onto your website. But also, to highlight to other customers the benefits of referring new customers to your business. You’ll be amazed how quickly word of mouth spreads and it is by far the cheapest yet most cost effective advertising you will ever get.

All of these suggestions take time and effort. But in the long term they become easier and the benefits far outweigh the costs. As mentioned, CRM is the key to managing all these campaigns. Keeping a history of all your contact with customers from phone calls to emails and then tracking their spending to build a comprehensive profile of who they are and what their needs are. Effectively, with proper management your CRM solution can run your entire business.

Richard Brunton is a Director of Burwell IT Ltd. With over 15 years IT experience supporting a variety of CRM systems.

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