There are two ways to run your business. You can use the mass marketer approach and treat everyone equally and risk having your service or product become a commodity. Or you can design systems and processes to offer customized service to your best customers in the way they want it – and in turn, increase sales. You can only do that, however, if you focus on the few. Here you find some examples of how to increase loyalty:
Stay away from the traditional loyalty programs or gifts:
- No branded cups or hats or corporate logod merchandise (these are usually thrown aways quicker than it took them to purchase). There is no personalized, emotional connection with these gifts. They say, you are like any other customer to me.
Be careful with these as they might backfire
- Reward based programs. Business clients might start to see the loyalty rewards as normal treatment and do not feel these are part of a loyalty program. They might expect to get something beyond.
Try one of these instead:
- A personal gift that reflects you know the person is always appreciated. It emphasis the relationship you have and creates an emotional bonding. What do you think about sponsoring one's favortie charity or sending a big grill set to a steak lover.
- Clear demonstration that you know the company and can adapt your service or product ot the client. This makes the switch cost or the inconvenience cost to go up. You can demonstrate this by the breath of your network, giving info back from different departments where your contact does not have a lot of contact, thus integrating the business better. Nurture this network. Introduce new colleagues to the network showcasing that your company knows them better. Make the people connect deeper.
- Have a segmented approach. Put true loyalty programs only in place for your top customers. So you need to do the necessary analysis to put the ranking forward.
- Measure the impact of your loyalty programs. Install a web-based questionnaire and take steps to improve on the feedback. Loyalty comes often from customer service.
- Develop "special customer service" level for your top 10% customers. This could range from midnight delivery to access to data to in-house people. Make this service exclusive for them.
