With existing customers reportedly spending around 67% more than new ones, harnessing loyalty has the power to produce impressive business results. Loyal customers act as brand ambassadors spreading positive feelings about your business to friends and family but why is it that some brands manage to build a merry band of loyal followers who repeatedly go back for more while others just can’t seem to gain customer commitment?
We believe it’s all a matter of emotional connection – how the overall experience with the brand makes a person feel. It seems obvious – make people feel good and they will come back for more. When an emotional connection is made with an organisation, its customers show commitment by repeatedly choosing that brand over the competition and by spreading the word of their positive experience. Research consistently confirms that companies that work hard to offer an exceptional customer experience, win in the loyalty polls. The retailer that repeatedly scores number one in the world for customer loyalty? Amazon. Even without any physical high street presence or actual face to face interaction with customers, Amazon has successfully secured customer loyalty through unwavering market leading customer experience.
In the ecommerce world, the contact centre plays a pivotal role in the perception customers hold of the brand. So important is the contact centre to Amazon that every year, founder and CEO Jeff Bezos reportedly asks senior management to attend two days of contact centre training so that they can really get to know and understand the customers’ needs while experiencing the challenges faced by staff. By doing this, management can then use this information to enhance the customer experience on an emotional level.
In the absence of face to face interaction often the main contact customers have with a brand is through the contact centre, so it is important the experience is good! The contact may be via live chat, email or voice but each interaction has the power to build an emotional connection that can drive customer loyalty. The emotional element of the contact cannot be underestimated. Customers are much more likely to come back again and again if they feel a brand really cares about them.
Loyalty is not just about customers liking your products or services but is part of an overall process of building a long-lasting relationship through emotion and trust. Incorporate the feel-good factor into your customer experience and you will see loyalty (and revenue!) grow.
At Diabolocom we are so passionate about the power of emotional connections in business, we even wrote a book about it – From emotional experience to relational intelligence!
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