How to build loyal customer network

Getting customers is the easy part. Keeping them happy and loyal in a growing network can require a little more legwork than you think. But, it’s the easiest way to have a thriving business and grow it.

Your customers are possibly the most important part of running a business – if they aren’t happy, your business will struggle to stay afloat. Businesses thrive on their happy customers and their unhappy ones can hinder them severely. You should always endeavour to understand who your customers are – especially your best ones.

By understanding your best customers and their needs and wants in a company or business, you can play on those and best serve your customer base.

Customers who feel appreciated and listened to are likely to continue to use your business to fulfil their needs and wants over others who do not listen to them. Those customers are not only going to be loyal to you and your business, but also recommend you and your services or products to others – which equals more business.

Another way to connect with your customers is to get personal with them. If you send repeat buyers offers which are relevant to them, they are more likely to look at the relevant services and products that you have to offer and consider buying them.

However, it is important to note that what you send your loyal customers must be relevant to their search histories on your website or their purchase history, otherwise your loyal customers may regard it as spam mail. This might cause you to lose out on future business by jeopardising your relationship with your loyal customers.

The loyal customers that you already have through the quality of your products and services should have their customer experiences designed to make their lives easier in any way possible.

For example, this could include adding more postage options for your customers to choose from – next day delivery, signed for delivery, Saturday delivery, etc.

Giving your customers more options and more flexibility will lead them to consider your services in the future – therefore creating more loyal customers. There are hundreds of ways in which you could make your business more accessible and easier to navigate for your customers.

It could be as simple as changing the layout of your website to be as simplistic as necessary, so as not to confuse anyone.

Another example is setting out a very clear, structured and simple returns policy or cancellation policy which is easy to find and execute when necessary.

It is also important that the team you have in place dealing with customers enquiries and issues are as helpful and trained as fully as possible. By ensuring that all the contact customers have with your team is beneficial to them and their contact is monitored and analysed to keep up to date with any common issues that require further preventative action being taken, your customers will feel valued and happy with your business.

While some of these points made may seem common sense, many businesses do not actively operate using them and therefore will miss out on keeping potential loyal customers.