How to build customer loyalty – trends for retailers
Retailers today faces dual
pressure of not only growing their business but also ensuring they do not lose
profit margins. Major focus area has been retaining customers, acquiring new
customers, understanding customer buying behaviour, engaging customer to make
them feel that they are part of the store and increase their frequency of
visits.
In past before the technology
boom people use to maintain personal relationship with their customers. They
used to know each and every person by name and preference. This relationship
was one of the corner stone of the retailer’s success.
With time, retailers started to
depend more on technology than personal approach and interaction reached to its
minimum level leading to customer becoming more of a reluctant buyer than a
committed one. There was disconnect. Since retailers also grew and expanding,
they were limited by time and geography to interact personally with every
customer on regular basis and were badly looking for some solution that can
help them bridge the gap again.
Customer loyalty is the new
buzzword in the market. Basic form of loyalty comes in discount offers and
point accumulation and redemption form, but advanced loyalty program also
include Gift cards, vouchers and promo coupons on multiple platform and sites.
It offers an integrated solution with omni-channel availability of benefits to
customers. Loyalty integrated with digital platform and automated customer
relationship management techniques could be one of the most powerful tools to
reach out to the beleaguered customers today.
Loyalty solutions are the best
possible replication of the old relationship building technique. It is very
effective when used pragmatically and in a planned manner to get the best
results.
Retailers can use SMS and email
messaging system to regularly update their customers about new arrivals in the
store. The message can also be personalized through predictive analysis of
customer buying behaviour in regards to price points, product and categories.
In other ways CRM tools can also serve them reach out to their customers on
important days like anniversary, birthday, festivals and other important days. This
can make the customer feel personalized and important and helps in enhancing
the relationship with the retailer.
Further retailers can also
leverage the social platform to engage and improve the buying decision of their
customers by providing them timely information, offers, benefits and unbiased
reviews of new arrivals and selections. This can add lots of goodwill and positive
buzz about them.
They can also integrate their
loyalty program with mobile to leverage the full benefit of it by bringing
customers on mobile apps platform, rewarding mobile engagements, providing
customized value added services like payment gateway, promotional offers at
real time, coupon redemption and store level interaction on the move.
With Intelligent insights into
their customers’ persona and buying behaviour through analytical reports and
dashboards retailers can once again take their relationship with their customer
to older times when the store owner provided a personal touch to the
relationship and take their business to new heights.
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