How SME’s Can Create Customer Loyalty December 5, 2011

For any business to grow, it is extremely essential to ensure that, your potential customers turn into your brand loyals. This is possible only when you offer your customers with the kind of satisfaction they are looking for.

Here are a few simple tips SME’s can follow to create & maintain customer loyalty:

1. Provide your customers with an unbeatable line & range of products & services. This ensures that your customers can get whatever they are looking for without leaving your premises.
2. A good way to tempt your customers is to offer them with incentives they hadn’t expected to gain before visiting your site. This may include, freebies, seasonal discounts, free coupons, gifts or a chance to participate and win a competition. There are several big companies relying on loyalty schemes that customers can use to earn points & redeem later as rewards.
3. Generate customer loyalty by sponsoring special groups like sports clubs or bands. This helps you create goodwill for yourself & a brand loyalty from your customers.
4. Brand loyalty depends largely on the trust you generate in the minds of your customers. Unless they can trust your reliability & loyalty, they will never come back.
5. An understatement for loyalty builders is to “do good to do well”. Think of schemes whereby you can keep your regular customers coming in while also encouraging new customers. For eg: You may offer discounts on special occasions like Children’s Day, where customers bringing in their used clothes can avail discounts on their new purchases. This way, you not only benefit your regular customers but also create goodwill by extending help to the needy.
6. Identify your gold customers & offer them the best of services since, this limited percentage of customers are the ones who work as catalysts in your sales graph. They are often instrumental in generating a mouth-to-mouth promotion for your brand.
7. This is a competitive business world where every SME wants to offer his best. Thus, to get an edge over your competitors, find out the kind of services customers are looking for & make it easier for your customers to shop with you rather than your counterparts.
8. Go in for interactive customer shopping. There is a certain class of customers who prefer to do custom shopping, like a particular colour, size, design, pattern & so on. For such people, you can offer facilities like request emails or forms, where customers can just fill in their requirements & come back whenever you have the right stuff to offer.

A loyal customer is what makes your business grow. So, if you can ensure customer satisfaction, then it is a battle half won for you!

Contributed by Sushmita Kalashikar