Guest post by Alain Glaeser.
Word-of-mouth advertising has always played a powerful role in both consumer and B2B buying decisions. But social media, review sites, and influencer marketing have exponentially amplified the voices of customers.
Image credit: Blake Wisz on Unsplash
Buyers now rely less on information provided by suppliers and industry analysts, and more on what they find about your brand through reviews and other online sources.
According to Gartner, B2B buyers today spend only 5% or 6% of their time with sales reps while comparing multiple suppliers. Gartner also found that when B2B buyers are making purchase decisions, they spend most of their time independently researching the brand online.
In this transformed sales dynamic, when online reviews and customer testimonials heavily influence B2B buyers, building strong customer relationships is more important than ever.
Like any other relationship, positive change requires continuous effort. Strong consumer relationships help you generate new leads, reduce customer acquisition costs, and ultimately earn more profit.
Here are six sure-fire customer relationship strategies to help build long-term brand loyalty.
Why Customer Relationships and Brand Loyalty Are More Vital Than Ever
The benefits of fostering strong customer relationships go beyond merely retaining current customers. Here are four more reasons you should prioritize building customer relationships and loyalty.
- Reduces CAC: Strong customer relationships reduce customer acquisition cost by increasing your repeat customer purchase rate, purchase frequency, and average order value. They also foster customer advocacy and help bring in new leads organically.
- Reduces customer churn: According to reports, 61% of consumers stop spending with a brand due to poor customer experience (CS). Prioritizing customer relationships enhances CX and builds brand loyalty. It also decreases the likelihood of losing customers.
- Increases customer lifetime value (CLV): Building solid relationships with your consumers encourages them to spend more on your products and services. Your most loyal customers will spend the most money over an extended period.
- Improves NPS score: By showing your customers that you value their support, you incentivize them to post authentic, positive voluntary reviews and provide honest feedback on social media. It enhances your brand’s overall NPS score.
Six Proven Strategies to Build Customer Relationships and Brand Loyalty
1. Embrace automation tools.
Efficiency is vital in building positive customer relationships and brand loyalty. Traditional manual methods are often inefficient and imprecise.
Real-time support and proactive services are key to retaining customers over the long term, and automation tools simplify these processes for you and your clients. Choose a CRM tool that offers live chat, frequent and automated customer surveys, and quick delivery tracking features.
Implementing scheduled follow-up emails and post-purchase thank-you notes are welcome special touches that enhance the overall customer experience. Moreover, the CRM analytics will generate insightful reports, helping you anticipate customer needs, make smart adjustments to your strategy, and continually adapt your operations to changing customer expectations. An effective automation tool will also reduce the risk of inaccuracies in shipping and delivery information.
But to choose the best automation tool for your brand, you need to compare marketing automation software. This enables you to evaluate different CRM solutions without booking a demo or purchasing a subscription.
2. Train your employees.
Your customer-facing employees who directly deal with shipping, billing, and other service issues play a critical role in building positive relationships with your buyers. No matter how skilled your workforce is, there’s always room for improvement, especially in markets where customers have dozens of alternatives.
Thus, developing an employee training program focused on delivering exceptional customer service is an excellent strategy for keeping your clients loyal and happy.
Educate your employees on active listening and show them how it can help turn a challenging customer interaction into a positive one. Invest in training your new employees and reskilling them. Focus on training your customer service representatives (CSRs) and frontline employees on phone etiquette, the best ways to deal with difficult people, and how to make customers feel valued. Online courses are available if budget is an issue.
As a training activity, you can ask your customer service employees to talk about their most extensive or unusual customer interaction and how it proved challenging. Discussing such problems helps develop a solution-oriented attitude in your workers and surfaces unique ideas to address such situations.
3. Understand customer psychology.
To improve your customer service experience, it’s helpful to have a thorough understanding of your customer needs — which requires a proper analysis of customer psychology. Customers expect to be valued and listened.
To resolve their problems, explore why people purchase your products and how they use them. This will help your business adapt its offerings to suit the changing expectations of your target market.
Understanding customer psychology is vital for prioritizing new features, setting prices, and structuring your customer service policies and practices to maximize customer retention. Various factors can influence consumer behavior, including personal, cultural, social, and regional considerations. Conduct frequent customer surveys to give you accurate insights into customer expectations and how to most effectively improve your products and customer service.
For example, Costa Coffee uses an NPS survey to collect customer feedback. They currently rank first among their major competitors, while Starbucks ranks second and Dunkin’ Donuts is third.
Image credit: Comparably
Focus your research on customers’ preferences and interests. This will help you personalize their brand experience, making them feel valued and expanding your base of loyal customers.
Darshan Somashekar, who runs im-a-puzzle.com, talks to his customers. “We regularly get on the phone with our users to understand why they play our puzzle games, who they are, and what else they might want. They appreciate our efforts, and we leave with invaluable product insights that have improved our engagement.”
4. Provide impeccable customer service.
What’s your mantra to build a loyal customer base?
Customer relationships are all about how you treat your buyers after the sale. If your CSRs are poorly trained, slow to respond, or impossible to reach, buyers will likely take their business elsewhere. Maintaining reliable and consistent customer service can be expensive and challenging to manage, but is essential.
Ensure their issues reach the right department, right away, and are quickly resolved. Position your brand as the expert in your field. Show that you take reputation management seriously and are capable and happy to resolve any issue a customer may face.
Establish a multi-channel communication approach. Inform your customers about their options for reaching out to you if they face post-purchase issues, and ask how they prefer to be contacted. Make sure these channels are actively monitored and deliver a consistent experience.
A great example of customer service is the credit card company American Express. They provide travel protection, retail protection for returns and extended warranties, airline lounge access, and benefits from their global partners.
5. Create personalized and valuable experiences.
Another crucial practice in retaining lifelong customers is to engage with them on a personal level. According to a study by Monetate, 79% of organizations that exceeded their revenue target have a documented personalization strategy.
But personalizing the customer experience for a diverse target market can be challenging. The best way to approach it is to collect and analyze data for accurate insights into your customer interactions.
A data-driven approach will help you segment your audience into smaller groups and make it easier for you to create unique experiences that meet the needs of each segment. It will also help you send timely payment reminders and alerts, so your customers don’t forget to renew their subscriptions. These actions demonstrate your effort to provide them with uninterrupted and smooth service.
Analytics and reports also allow your customer service reps to determine what drives which customer interactions, their intentions, and how they can better engage with them. It enables your CSRs to listen more carefully, align their services with consumer preferences, eliminate pain points, and engage with customers on a personal level.
6. Incentivize loyal customers.
Maintaining strong customer relationships requires continual efforts. To keep buyers loyal to your brand, develop incentive programs to keep them engaged.
A reward strategy for loyal customers can incentivize them to keep buying from you. Implementing referral and loyalty programs encourages them to not only make repeat purchases but also promote your brand to others.
A globally recognized example of a remarkable customer loyalty program is Amazon Prime. For a nominal flat fee, their customers enjoy free same-day or next-day shipping for over a million products, access to their streaming service, and shopping rewards like “Prime Early Access,” enticing deals, and cash back offers.
Rewards such as discounts, cash back, loyalty points, gift cards, store credit, upgrades, and gifts can mean a lot to customers. You can also implement programs like welcoming new customers with a discount after their first purchase.
Conclusion
Strong customer relationships and long-term brand loyalty are crucial for business growth. Since people now heavily depend on customer reviews and testimonials before buying products, brands must prioritize and revamp their customer service strategy to recognize and reward brand advocates while responding quickly and helpfully to questions and complaints.
While automation tools greatly help manage and execute your customer service strategy, it’s important to also adopt other tactics like coaching your employees and designing a value-based business model.
When you value your customers, they will view your brand as valuable. To realize the benefits of strong customer relationships, it’s vital to consistently listen to your buyers and respond to their needs.
