Customer loyalty refers to the likelihood of a customer to keep patronizing a brand or company. Many times, customers are loyal to a brand because of their previous experiences and how satisfied they are with the quality of service they receive. The value you provide your clients determines their loyalty to your brand. 

Here are some of the distinguishing features of a loyal customer that can be easily identified. 

Features of Loyal Customer

They stick around 

A customer that is loyal to your brand is not easily influenced by price rates or better offerings from other brands, they would rather pay more for the standard of value that they are familiar with, or rearrange their schedules to accommodate the brand’s availability. 

Loyal customers are at peace with your brand and are not in search of new brands to offer the same services, nor are they open to pitches from competing brands. 

Recommendation and reviews

A loyal customer will always recommend your brand to friends and family and see to it that they become customers. With loyal customers, reviews are not a fuss. They are always willing and ready to give their reviews every time. 

They have your back 

Even when the brand does things wrong or goes below standard, you can be sure that a loyal customer is always understanding and ready to wait till the issues are fixed. 

As long as these brands are in business, they will keep patronising them and include all goods and services offered by the brand. 

Notwithstanding the size of a brand, customer loyalty is of utmost importance, and can never be overlooked. Oftentimes, the experiences of these customers are what determines whether they will stay retained or not.

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5 Strategies to Increase Customer Loyalty 

Brands must strive to boost their customer loyalty to keep clients patronising them and helping them promote their brand to their connections as well. They can do this by endeavouring to meet and supersede the expectations of their customers. Here are the top strategies to increase customer loyalty for your brand; 

Build a Loyalty Program for Your Loyal Customers 

Rewards are such sweetness to the hearts of your customers. Do well to put a structure in place to reward ardent customers to your brand, this is a great incentive and will cause them to keep coming back. This structure can be in the form of points, for instance, each customer gets specific points depending on the kind of service or amount spent per time. 

Over time these points accumulate to become bigger, you can set rewards for each target point attained. The rewards could be free services, or discounts based on the target points, etc. 

ThankUCash, the largest customer loyalty platform in Nigeria, is one of the credible rewards and discounts platforms that can help you give your customers cash rewards when they patronize you. You can have a look at some of their services here. 

Set Up a Referral Program 

Asides from patronising your brand, loyal customers tend to recommend their favourite brands to their friends and families. You can make the most out of this by creating a program whereby the referred person gets a little discount and then the loyal customer gets a gift after a specific number of referrals come through. 

New consumers trust recommendations from a trusted friend even more than advertisements or campaigns. Rewarding the referee and the new customer causes a ripple effect, as the new customer will spread the message and then it becomes a cycle of referrals and new customers. 

A perfect example of such a system is with the PiggyVest savings brand, for referring a new person to use the Piggyvest app, you get 1000 naira and the new user gets 1000 naira too. 

Good Read: Feature of a Good Customer Loyalty Software

Encourage Customer Feedbacks and Reviews 

A brand that doesn’t pay attention to its customers won’t live long. Pay attention to your customer’s feedback, the positive ones and the negative ones. Despite being a good brand, you are bound to have negative reviews sometimes, no matter how few they are, pay rapt attention to them, investigate to see how true they are.

If the negative feedback is true, work on correcting them immediately, if they aren’t true, respond calmly and carefully to the review and ensure that the customer is at peace and knows better.

Customers always feel connected with the knowledge that their views were treated as important and put into consideration, it promotes confidence and ensures loyalty to your brand, like a safe space. 

Ensure a Top-notch Customer Care System 

Customer care service is the heart of every brand and should be treated with utmost importance. Ensure that no client walks into your business, and leaves the same way, they should rather leave with solutions to their problems, value for their money, answers to their questions and the feeling of love and importance in their hearts. 

Ensure that every person that deals with customers directly has answers to every question about the brand, it’s wrong to have a client ask a question about the information on the website, and the customer care representative is blank. Customer care service is a priority for your brand and should be treated as such. 

Pay Attention to Follow-ups and Updates 

Categorise your customers into various groups and treat them differently. Send personalised emails bringing them up to date with happenings in the brand. Thank them for their patronage per time, feed them with information or tips you think they will need. 

Do not send the same email to the entire mailing list. Send event-based emails instead, for instance, every time a user on your website performs a specific activity on your website or brand, respond to this activity with an email that is connected to this action immediately. These emails can be done automatically instead of manually, using marketing automation services. 

For instance, for every new subscriber, there could be a welcome mail sent and for an item purchased, a thank you mail gets sent automatically. 

For news on ongoing recruitment in the brand, anniversary events, clearance sales and other activities, your loyal customers ought to have first-hand knowledge about this. It creates a sense of belonging to your brand and instils that connection that always brings them back. 

You can use a variety of techniques to gain your consumers’ loyalty, but we recommend that you employ these strategies to establish a relationship between your brand and your clients. For more strategies to increase customer loyalty, reach out to us here.