6 Ways Top-notch Brand Uses To Satisfy And Retain Their Customers

Good communication and the quality of your product are the two main concerns of Customers. How can step up your game?

The life of most businesses are their customers and this is a fact that most people know but only few accept. Without these customers, you have no reason to open up shop; be it offline or online.

While Convincing a first time customer to try out your product or service is what I like to call a coup, there is nothing better than having a constant customer who is loyal to you and your brand.

A store owner for instance can’t just rely on his quality products, though that fact could get customers and first timers but still, to make this customers come back to your store, you may have to provide an incentive for returning and also cultivate consistency in your store and even go as far as convincing them to subscribe for your mailing list.

For entrepreneurs to engage, satisfy and retain customers, here are six steps to help them:                           1. Convenience.

Customers like comfort and accessibility. So, your brand has to continually find innovative ways to make your products and services available and accessible to customers on the go. Hence, sell convenience. Take a look at Dominos, the pizza giant. They keep stepping up their game with innovative ways to ensure customers comfort. Mobile Order and Pay feature sort of screams “ease.” Those innovations alone are worth paying some extra cash for and will ultimately ensure brand loyalty .                                         2.Pre-engage with your prospects.

No matter how focused your online marketing efforts are, or how fine-tuned your website is, today’s prospects rarely fill out forms or order services after getting their first impression. The noise is just too big; too much else is going on; too little time has gone by during that first visit, to build trust. Pre-engagement with your prospect shows value and communication which is what makes it important.                                                3.Get personal.

Know your customers on a personal level. Humanize your brand; let customers relate and interact with it like it’s a person. Get to know what matters to them. Send them messages on important dates like birthdays. Send them emails and newsletters and start those communications with their first names. For long-term customers, send personalized and branded materials to continually place your brand into their personal space; sustain their top-of-mind awareness. This can also inspire referrals to friends and family to experience your brand.                                                         4.Let your corporate social responsibility be impactful.

Find needs that people are interested in filling, and try to fill those needs. As I once read about TOMS (An international Brand); they’ve mastered the art of this strategy with its “One on One” campaign, where every pair of shoes sold translates to another pair being given to charity or someone in need. TOMS has given away over 60 million pairs of new shoes and converted new customers into brand loyalists. This social impact angle is definitely a welcome development and one everyone wishes more brands would adopt.                                            5. Implement customer feedback.

Feedback should be taken seriously and implemented as much as the business can manage. Once feedback has been implemented, communicate with customers that you listened to them and as a result, added the new, suggested feature, or eliminated an old one.

For weeks now, I’ve been trying to get in touch with The Nigerian Breweries and some other brands on a proposal that would help the brand but for weeks now and no response; this could discourage customers and make them prefer a brand that that responds immediately. Then there are companies like Nike that have totally rocked the customer feedback feature. Nike created a separate Twitter account, @NikeSupport, just for responding to customer inquiries and issues. The company’s Nike Support is dedicated to all things customer service, making it easier for customers to reach out when they have a problem or a question they want answered. The company’s support staff are also quick to response.                                            6.Create amazing experiences for your customers.

Continuously create out-of-this world experiences that are unique to you. These could be in-store, at trade shows, at global or local events or through product interaction. A company that does this well is Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola has continuously shown this through campaigns like its campus-friendly twist, where a Coca-Cola bottle can be opened only by the matching bottle of a friend, and its unwrap a gift bottle program, where many people got Christmas bow ties from their Coca-Cola bottles.

In conclusion, your customers are primarily concerned about two things: your product quality and good communication. If your brand can offer a top-notch product while holding things together at the social media interactive level, as well as the social impact one, you won’t have a loyalty problem.