Customer loyalty is essential to business success. Gaining new customers is expensive and challenging, so it should be a priority for any brand to maintain existing relationships with the customers who keep coming back.
Having satisfied customers is excellent, but having loyal customers is even better, as they continue to return to your business and have higher lifetime values. Below we have outlined four common behaviours of loyal customers. Are your customers hitting these marks?
A loyal customer…
1. Spends more
Customers who are loyal and engaged spend more often than the average customer, bringing more revenue and profitability. They spend 90% more frequently and 60% more per transaction. They are interested in learning about your new products or services, and they make repeat purchases of the things they love. These customers love being marketed to, so adopting a successful customer loyalty program, which isn’t an expensive task, can increase customer lifetime value exponentially. They are also more likely to spend on your more expensive products or services because they already trust your brand and believe in their value.
2. Recommends your brand and products to friends and family
Loyal customers will refer their friends and family to your business, openly spreading the word about a company, and they enjoy doing business with you. Your most loyal customers will not only like and follow your brand on social media, but they will tag you in posts when appropriate and share their support on public review sites like Yelp and TrustPilot. Word-of-mouth marketing is a less expensive and more successful method to customer acquisition, and the lifetime value of a customer obtained via referral is 16% higher than a non-referral customer. People trust referrals from those they know, and increasingly from those they don’t know, with more and more consumers (particularly millennials) looking to online referrals and reviews to guide their purchases.
3. Offers constructive criticism
Your loyal customers are returning because they’ve received good service from your business time and time again, and there is a lot to be learned from them to see where you’re succeeding and what you’re doing right. When it comes to what you’re doing wrong, they’re a lot more likely to be constructive with their criticism of you than new customers because they know how great you can be. Often we look to our unhappy customers to see what we are doing wrong in the hopes that we won’t lose any more customers for the same error, but for every customer who complains, 26 don’t. Look to your loyal and engaged customers to find out why they return and what drives their loyalty and extend those learnings to the customer experience at the other end of the spectrum to prevent losing more. And equally, when they give negative feedback, open a dialogue with them to not only maintain their loyalty but to learn more about what made an individual interaction less positive than previous experiences.
4. Treats your employees and business well
Because loyal customers care about your brand, they also care about your employees. The relationship is reciprocal and respectful, which is important to the experiences on both sides. Customers who are simply satisfied after a single experience or are passive towards your brands might not be as instinctively appreciative of what your staff do or about the premises on which you operate. Because loyal customers know they will be returning, it matters to them that your business is in good condition and welcome positive rapport with your employees.
