The aim of all your customer engagements is to ensure that the customer will make another purchase from your company.
‘Delighting’ your customer has been hailed as the way to get customer loyalty. This requires that you understand your customer and their needs very well, an exercise that may be more costly and take longer to achieve.
However, at the very least, every customer must get satisfaction from your service.
When someone walks into your shop, what are the first sights and sounds that they experience? Who attends to them? How long does it take before they are attended to? How are they served? How do they feel as they walk out?
To deliver a satisfactory experience, look out for the following three aspects in your offering to customers.
Customers will look for the product or service that gives the best value for their money. If you are not able to compete favourably on price, ensure that you are excelling at other value attributes.
Take the scenario of parents looking for shoes at the beginning of a school term. Have you got the most durable shoes on the market? Are you able to offer a delivery service for those who cannot make it to your outlet from their offices? Would you offer a money-back guarantee for shoes that don’t fit and are returned the next day?
Delivery service as an added benefit can increase your value offer
The customer needs to be convinced that they are getting great value for the price that they are paying. Look for creative ways to add value to your service in order to have your customer make a repeat purchase.
The customer has the ability to boycott, or even worse, defame your business. This comes at great cost to you.
Avoid nasty encounters with customers, by all means possible. If they decide to launch a negative campaign on your business, it might take a long time and effort to recover from such an episode.
Things will definitely go wrong at times. Quickly acknowledge the lapse in service and find measures to appease an upset customer. Offers like a discount on a product or service may help to keep the peace.
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On the positive side, build relationships with customers by taking the extra step of getting involved in their personal events. Send a message on their birthday if you have information of their birth dates. Send an E-card during holidays.
Make all procedures easy and accessible for clients. Pay attention to what clients want and not what you want for them.
Take the example of online engagements. Many companies are opting to use their online platforms to engage with their customers. If this is the case, design your website and social media platforms so that the least tech-savvy person would be able to find their way around it.
Preempt customer questions by providing a Q&A section where every question that your sales reps encounter in their interactions with clients, is answered. This way, any customer who may have the same question in the future would find it.
Remember also to make the process of acquiring customer feedback as easy as possible. You never know what valuable information you will pick up when you listen.
How easy is it for your customer to give you feedback?
Even with all your efforts, customer loyalty cannot be guaranteed. However, if you satisfy the needs of your clients, keep things simple and constantly listen and engage with them, you will be on the right track to ensuring that repeat business.