“86% of customers will pay more for better customer service experience”

– IBM CEI Study

Customer loyalty is an ongoing positive relationship between a customer and a business. It’s what drives repeat purchases and prompts existing customers to choose your company over a competitor offering similar benefits.

Customers may love your product or service, but if they don’t feel valued and respected when they do business with you, they’re unlikely to form a positive emotional connection to your brand. Certainly, customers appreciate friendly and pleasant service when they make a purchase.

A good experience in retail goes a long way. But what’s often more powerful is how you receive feedback and what you do with it when you get it.

Customers who feel listened to and looked after when something goes wrong, or if they need support after a purchase, are likely to have positive emotion towards you in the future, and to tell others good things instead of bad – whether that’s via social media or face to face. Increased customer communication and customer satisfaction should follow.

Traditionally, businesses have measured success in terms of sales. But as our understanding of customer experience becomes more sophisticated, we can see that each purchase is part of a larger picture – the customer journey.

This includes your marketing and customer-focused advertising, your retail experience (whether online or offline), reviews about your products and those of your competitors, and what happens after a specific customer receives their product or service.

Together, all these touchpoints have an influence on customer loyalty, and by considering the journey as a whole you can target your efforts on the places they’ll have the most effect. That might mean improving response times, ironing out pain points in your website or booking engine, or simply managing customer expectations by clearly communicating the way you work.

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