Building customer loyalty in the digital age: It IS possible

Customer loyalty. It’s the white whale of the service world, ever more elusive here in the digital age. Your customers now have a wealth of product and service options just a few clicks away, and as a result, it has become almost impossible to keep a customer loyal. 

While some brands just want to provide good customer service, they don’t know how to keep repeat customers. You can explore customer feedback or create a customer loyalty program, but just end up spending more money.  Few seem to have settled on a strategy that actually works. Customers either come back, or they don’t. 

Until now, that is. 

Let’s look at four research-backed strategies for to build customer loyalty:

1. Success on first contact

Your customers are short on time and patience. Great low-effort companies know this and ensure that

Your customers are short on time and patience. Great companies know this and ensure that every customer’s first contact channel is their last contact channel. When your customer contacts you, transfers and recurrent contacts frustrate them, cost you more – and they can also cost you customers. 

84% of your customers want their first contact channel to be their last contact channel.

Build customer loyalty by ensuring that your team can solve problems on the first contact. 

2. Solve tomorrow’s problems

Once you’ve successfully answered the customer’s question on the first contact, step two is to solve their next issue. What problems might the customer face after your conversation? Callbacks are expensive—and just asking if you’ve resolved the issue isn’t cutting it. 

Instead, think one step ahead and solve tomorrow’s problem for your existing customers, too. This kind of forward-thinking customer service will make a huge impact on your customer’s perception of your brand and their brand loyalty, especially if it saves them a phone call. 

3. Manage effort perception

Thanks to research in The Effortless Experience, we know that a low-effort customer experience results in customers that are 94% more likely to repurchase, and 88% more likely to increase their spend with that brand. We also know that certain language like advocacy, positive language, and anchoring, can all build a great customer experience and encourages customers to have a positive view of your brand.  

In calls where advocacy was used, customer effort decreased by 77%.

Build customer loyalty by ensuring that all reps use this powerful positive language to manage the customer’s effort perception during the call. 

4. Staff for success

The type of agent that we need in contact centers is changing. Where once we might have simply looked for a positive voice and a listening ear, customers now demand more from their customer service experience. 

Agents must now control the narrative and solve complex problems on the fly. With this trend in mind, build customer loyalty by staffing solutions-oriented agents to handle these evolving customer needs.

These four strategies foster loyal customers for any type of business here in the digital age. And if you’ve noticed a theme in our four strategies… you’re right! The secret is out: Low-effort customer interactions are the heart of customer loyalty.

Want to learn how to reduce effort for your customers and start building customer loyalty that will last? 

Request a demo today to see how conversation analytics offered by Tethr can uncover insights your business needs to develop a CX strategy that’s customer centric.