How to Increase Brand Loyalty by Offering a Great Customer Experience

Fueled by ever-evolving technologies, and fraught with the potential to be undercut or bypassed by new forces, today’s consumer marketplace has never been more competitive. And for that reason, the question of how to increase brand loyalty has never been more important.

For businesses of all sizes, and across all industries, winning the long-term loyalty of consumers isn’t just a bonus, but a sheer necessity. Right now, the channels available for customers seeking alternatives to what you offer are constantly multiplying. The extent to which you not only keep casual customers on board but actively transform them into brand advocates plays a huge role in your long-term success.

The reasons for this are manifold. First and foremost, it costs far more to win over a new customer than to keep the ones you already have. Writing for the Harvard Business Review, Amy Gallo notes “acquiring a new customer is anywhere from five to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one.” She also points to research that shows increasing customer retention by just 5% can result in an increase of profit by as much as 95%.

“Acquiring a new customer is anywhere from five to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one, and increasing customer retention by just 5% can result in an increase of profit by as much as 95%.” Click To Tweet

On top of that, increasing brand loyalty not only helps you maintain sales activity among the folks that you’ve already won over, but it also helps to turn those same people into ambassadors for your brand. A 2017 study from the Blackhawk Network found that 86% of customers “most engage with a brand they are loyal to by recommending it to others.” And this is done both by positive online reviews and good, old-fashioned word of mouth.

(And, by the way, if you think online reviews don’t matter, consider a 2017 McKinsey customer experience report that found about three-fourths of all consumers “put as much trust in online reviews as in personal recommendations.”)

All of this goodwill and positive reviews amount to more than just a nice bonus for your brand: They directly help you generate sales and growth—without requiring any additional effort from you.

“Loyal customers believe that you provide value they cannot get elsewhere,” as Working Solutions CEO Kim Houlne writes in an overview of the importance of customer loyalty. “These customers become champions for your company, recommending it to others with needs for your service. For you, long-term customers providing consistent referrals means that you have built a growing, successful company.”

Loyal customers believe that you provide value they cannot get elsewhere.

How a Great Customer Experience Helps to Increase Brand Loyalty

Customers that are loyal to the “Starbucks” brand are waiting in line to enter a store. Source: https://www.shutterstock.com.

If staying in the good graces of customers seems like a daunting task in an era of cheap competition and reckless online reviews, there’s good news: The methods for increasing brand loyalty are better understood today than ever before. Indeed, experts agree that achieving brand loyalty among customers comes increasingly down to a single factor: Offering a great customer experience (CX).

“People are increasingly loyal to the retailers, products, brands and devices that consistently provide exceptional value with minimum friction or stress,” as PwC puts it in a rundown of customer experience best practices. “Give customers a great experience and they’ll buy more, be more loyal and share their experience with friends.”

“Positive customer experiences drive loyalty,” add the authors of the Blackhawk Network study, which found that a whopping 94% of consumers “name a consistently good customer experience” as their primary reason for staying loyal to a brand.

“94% of consumers “name a consistently good customer experience” as their primary reason for staying loyal to a brand.” Click To Tweet

All this data should come as a no-brainer, really. But, alas, the rewards of delivering a great CX aren’t always evident to all businesses. And this may be due largely to the simple fact that achieving a superior customer experience is much easier said than done, particularly when the communications channels necessary for doing so are increasingly abundant, and expertise in using them difficult to achieve on a casual basis.

How to Increase Brand Loyalty with On-demand Customer Care

Loyal customer on the mobile-phone in the subway getting help from on-demand contact center call center. Source: https://www.shutterstock.com./

For this reason, many companies now turn to outsourced, on-demand contact center services to help fulfill the important task of ensuring an excellent customer experience—and boosting customer loyalty in the process. There are many reasons for this, with some of the most striking examples including:

1. Capacity to Meet Specific Consumer Demand. When you choose an outsourced, on-demand contact center to deliver your customer care services, you’ll get a partner that not only works to meet your unique business model, but who also has the expertise to address the specific needs and demands of your customers as well.

“Knowledge about a company’s products, specials, rules and policies must be consistent between their internal team and ours to guarantee a seamless experience, thereby building customer loyalty for our clients,” writes Kim Houlne. The company she leads, Working Solutions, has met this challenge by developing a network of thousands of freelance agents across North America and Canada who offer expertise across a diverse variety of industries.

Knowledge about a company’s products, specials, rules and policies must be consistent between their internal team and ours to guarantee a seamless experience, thereby building customer loyalty for our clients.

2. Tech Infrastructure and Expertise to Meet Customers Wherever They Gather. Because the best on-demand contact center solutions providers are fully dedicated to the goal of ensuring premium customer care, they make the investment (in time, resources and knowledge) to build out a technological base that’s up to speed with the latest industry trends.

And this can be a difficult component of the customer experience for businesses to fulfill on their own, without outside help. Consider the vast expense of the technology needed to ensure you have a presence on every possible channel, from phone lines and website sales to email, social media, text messaging and so many others.

Communicating through different channels (email, video chat, and text message). Source: https://www.shutterstock.com.

Achieving a presence across all these channels involves continuously updating your hardware and software, as well as the security considerations that go along with them. It also requires real expertise to put all this technology to the best possible use from a CX perspective.

3. Ability to Offer an Omnichannel Experience. Taking this important aspect of technological infrastructure and expertise one step further, a quality CX partner can ensure that all of these components come together in a way that provides a seamless, omnichannel experience for your consumers.

Offering a superior omnichannel experience means your customers not only have the ability to make purchases online, but they can, during the same process, acquire any additional information they need, whether by asking a chatbot, sending a tweet or even calling you via phone. To ensure the best possible CX—and the loyalty that comes along with it—all of this should be carried out with no perceivable lag time or inconsistencies.

How to Increase Brand Loyalty with a Great CX: We Can Help

With more than 20 years of experience helping companies across a variety of industries achieve and even surpass their customer service goals, Working Solutions can deliver all of the above, and so much more. We’ve spent decades building real expertise in delivering the kind of customer experience that wins brand loyalty in today’s sophisticated and competitive consumer marketplace.

If you’re interested in learning more, we’re standing by to answer any questions. Contact us here to schedule your complimentary consultation with a Working Solutions expert.