Loyal Customers: Learning How To Get Them And How To Keep Them

Business Blog

You have a business. You want the business to do well. You also want loyal customers who will return again and again. Yet, how do you get loyal customers? How do you get customers to be loyal and remain loyal? How can you determine if a customer will remain loyal? All these loyalty questions are answered below.

How Do You Get Loyal Customers?

No matter how much you think you know about conducting business, the public is filled with fickle people. Trying to get loyal customers is hard, but it does not have to be that difficult all the time. You just have to think about what you would want from a business or company, and do that.

For example:

  1. Provide products everyone uses, everyone wants, and everyone has to have. 
  2. Reinvent products, add new products, keep old favorites, and remove products that do poorly in sales.
  3. Make sure all of your employees give 110% service. They will willingly do that when you pay them a living wage. 
  4. Hire customers who love your products to be employees. Then give them employee discounts on the stuff they love.
  5. Find a way to give customers something for nothing on a regular basis. Everyone loves free stuff, and customers will keep coming back to get the free stuff.
  6. Reward loyalty. This could be free stuff, loyalty points to trade for goods or services, etc.. 

Keep up with all of the above, and you will find that the customers that keep coming back are definitely your most loyal ones. At some point, survey these customers to find out what they love most. Keep what they love most, and ditch what they do not like at all (or change it). 

How Do You Get Customers to Remain Loyal?

This is easier than you think. Give them exactly what they want, all the time. No arguments, no restrictions, and all of the benefits you would want yourself is what you should give your customers. When they are treated like royalty, they remain loyal. Your employees should respond to every complaint with a smile, and give more back to an angry customer than that customer was expecting to get. You would be surprised how many angry customers turn loyal the minute they realize that they did not have to scream and shout to be heard and get exactly what they expected (and then some!).

How Do You Determine If a Customer Will Remain Loyal?

To determine if you have some loyal customers who will be with you decades from now, use approaches like customer lifetime analysis surveys and customer forecasting services. If you have no idea what these are, you can attend conferences on the subject. You can also hire a company that provides these services to businesses such as yours.

It is fairly simple. The next time one of your "regulars" comes in to buy something, ask him/her if he/she would be willing to fill out a quick survey for a percentage off his/her purchases that day. Not only are you providing good customer service that keeps that customer loyal, but you are also collecting valuable data that this other forecasting company can use to tell you who is most likely to remain loyal to your business and who is not.

Participate in a Sales Forecasting Program Regularly

As said in the beginning, the public is fickle. What they love about your business today may not be the same a year from now. It helps to participate in a sales forecasting program regularly to see how the needs and wants of your customers have changed. Then change your business to meet them.

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25 January 2018

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