Customer relationship management is at the forefront of all business debates. Overall, retaining existing customers is much more lucrative than attracting new ones. As a result, engaging in contact center solutions and technologies yields significant returns for companies. But the questions remain, how do you keep your customers happy? How can a contact center solution enhance customer loyalty?
Understanding Customer Loyalty
Customer retention is described as a contact center’s ability to keep its customers over time. Customer satisfaction is calculated in percentage terms by taking into account the number of consumers retained by a business at the completion of a given period.
This consideration is critical for ensuring the long-term viability of a brand’s turnover. Getting new customers is great, but holding them is much better!
What is the aim of customer loyalty?
The priorities provided Increase your performance. If a consumer loyalty scheme has a fixed expense, this commitment will increase the long-term revenue by attracting extra profits.
- Increase your performance: If a consumer loyalty scheme has a fixed expense, this commitment will increase the long-term revenue by attracting extra profits.
- Improve the credibility of your brand: A happy customer is a loyal customer. Putting in place a loyalty strategy would also please them. The latter would then be eager to tell their friends and family about your services or products.
- Keep the client partnership going: Customer satisfaction is dependent on the decision to not “leave them out.” Demonstrate that you are there for them. He will be relieved and see no need to go to a rival.
Customer Loyalty in Its Many forms
Even if customer satisfaction is the primary driver of customer loyalty, it is important to remember that a customer is not only faithful because he is pleased with the customer experience or a product’s specific features.
Customer loyalty refers to a long-term attachment to a business or brand. This bond may be preferential, submissive, or exclusive. It is also a sincere dedication even in the face of such obstacles, and there are many forms of loyalty.
1. Induced or experienced loyalty
According to its description, induced loyalty is the sort of loyalty that a customer or user feels towards a brand or a business. This devotion is not the product of a love affair between the brand and the client. This kind of loyalty is seen when a business or brand has a lock on the market.
2. Coveted loyalty
Contrary to triggered or endured loyalty, the sought loyalty is gained from consumers by implementing different consumer-oriented actions and relevant customer service techniques.
3. Behavioral loyalty
This form of loyalty derives from the consumer’s or customer’s behaviors or attitudes toward a brand or a business. Behavioral passivity leads to behavioral loyalty.
This allegiance is motivated by practicality rather than a genuine affinity for the company. The customer is trustworthy in this situation because the business or point of sale is on his regular street. The second aspect is the cost of change; the consumer becomes loyal because he prevents the formalities or potential expenses that a change will entail.
4. Attitudinal loyalty
Attitudinal loyalty refers to a consumer’s or customer’s repeated buying of a company. That is a genuine preference for the goods or services.
Attitudinal loyalty is a favorable outlook that a customer creates toward a brand based on factors such as consistency, price, customer support, customer care, and the impression portrayed by the contact center.
What tools and options should the contact center Software include?
Implementing customer loyalty-oriented technology in your contact center has many benefits for both your consumers’ and your agents’ performance. Indeed, it enables you to build a long-term trusting relationship and leads to the well-being and happiness of both parties. For your customer loyalty plan to be successful, you must have tools in your contact center software that can lead your customers on their journey while also supporting your teams’ everyday work.
Omnichannel Blending
This technology enables businesses to provide consumers with a variety of communication platforms through which they can contact their preferred company, such as social media, email, or webchat.
Previously, these various networks operated in isolation from one another. To the extent that multi-channel customer service teams are frequently not the same from one channel to the next and interact less with them. These issues are exacerbated as it comes to the digital consumer path. This style of functioning is likely to result in a chain reaction of dysfunctions, such as a lack of coherence in the customer’s response and a lack of follow-up on his history.
The criterion for omnichannel is both clear and ambitious: provide each user with a strictly equal level of service from one channel to the next, and be able to track and distinguish them regardless of the channel used. This necessitates the development of a platform that unifies all communication networks.
The concept is often summed up as a “seamless customer journey.”
A consumer must have a fluid and coherent experience no matter what channel he uses. So what are the advantages you can anticipate from Omnichannel?
- Strengthened consumer loyalty
- Higher-quality user service
- Humanized consumer engagement
- Improved customer satisfaction
CRM integration for a 360° view of the consumer
One of the most successful ways to create consumer loyalty is to have a personal relationship with them. You will do this by deploying a single framework that integrates with your CRM. This will collect all of your customers’ details in one location, providing your consultants with a full picture.
Furthermore, by centralizing all of this info, the agents will be able to get to know their customers better. They would be able to consult their buying history, life cycle, or the most recent exchanges they had with the company’s various divisions and, as a result of this knowledge, easily adapt their voice.
The power of AI
Artificial intelligence has the potential to exploit all of the fluctuating consumer data in order to create more exciting interactions and related trades. This makes for a more intimate and large-scale engagement with the customer. The necessary resources and tools are available, but brands must incorporate this new way of engaging their clients and prospects.
There are many advantages of using AI in call centers. The biggest advantage is that self-service allows you to supply consumers with the details they need. That you can offer client service without overburdening your agents.
As the use of AI continues to expand, contact centers are now shifting their attention to intelligent automation for organizational efficiency, customer experience, and other reasons. Predictive routing, automated after-call job, and data-driven agent-assist functions are being demanded and implemented at a fast pace in 2021.
The telephone channel is still a valuable tool
Despite the fact that the introduction of new digital solutions and social media is revolutionizing customer service. The telecommunications channel continues to be the medium of choice for customer relations. The mobile remains the most commonly used contact medium for good cause.
During the lockdown, the telephone saw an extraordinary surge in use. It is also the most widely used networking medium on the planet. Furthermore, it is the most effective way to get closer to the clients. It is an excellent platform to:
- Emphasize the authenticity of your customer service.
- Pay attention to your customers’ wishes and suggestions;
- Provide consumers with the most up-to-date information.
KPIs to measure consumer loyalty
Customer loyalty KPIs must provide more generic metrics of satisfaction in addition to performance issues specific to the call center. What exactly are they?
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) asks a basic but critical question about the company’s future: how many clients will recommend your services to their friends and family?
When the majority of consumers polled claim they would certainly or rather agree to randomly recommend you, the NPS is optimistic. In the other case, it is pessimistic. By providing a satisfaction questionnaire to consumers at the conclusion of the call, you can easily assess the company’s NPS.
The Customer Effort Score (CES)
Another important consumer loyalty metric is the CES, or “Customer Effort Score.” The concept here is to ask the customer how much work he or she thinks is required to complete a certain action, such as purchasing a product, requesting a refund, or calling customer support.
The CES metrics are used to assess the fluidity of the consumer interface and to identify and eradicate any friction that could hinder the customer – for example, long waiting times, long subscription conditions, and so on.
Retention rate
The retention rate is used to calculate the percentage of consumers who stay faithful to you since making their first purchase. It is one of the most successful customer loyalty KPIs for assessing the company’s success and future growth prospects.
Mistakes to avoid with Customer Loyalty
Customer preferences and consumption patterns are evolving at a breakneck pace in the modern era. Any business, regardless of scale, recognizes the importance of customer relationships.
As a result, when it comes to loyalty, a minor error will cost you a lot of money, and here are the most common ones to prevent.
1. Ignoring databases
As your consumers’ expectations evolve, you must continually work to meet them to the best of your ability. It is more lucrative to acquire and retain clients than to seek out new ones while developing the service.
There is nothing but an enriched database that shows the particulars of your valuable clients to do this. You must use these statistics to improve your customer service strategy and to personalize the success of your agents.
To help attract clients, you must stop treating them out of habit and instead strive to understand their desires. In this regard, the use of CRM tools for data collection and interpretation is recommended.
2. Disregard consumer remarks
If a significant number of customers cannot do without your products or services, mitigating disappointment remarks will save you a lot of money. It is necessary to respond to customer comments respectfully.
This will demonstrate to all that you are paying attention and are worried about your clients. Most notably, use your call recording software to consistently review clients’ complaints and implement necessary changes. Try providing a temporary solution by conducting feedback tests at the conclusion of the interaction with the client if there is a significant problem.
3. A happy customer is automatically a loyal customer
Customer loyalty is neither ensured nor gained. It is critical to remember that there are many explanations why a consumer can stay faithful to your service or product.
Whatever draws a customer to a company, keep in mind that he can still switch to one of your rivals. And if your brand has a good reputation, you are not immune. Focus on enhancing the service you offer and the consumer experience to keep ahead of the competition.
How does Nobelbiz improve customer loyalty?
Our True Omnichannel helps you connect with your customers on their favorite channels. Your contact center can expand by making your presence known on, Social Media, phone, Web Chat, and SMS.
Make your team’s agents’ lives easier and their workflow more efficient with our Agent reporting tool. We simplified tracking of customer history, agent interactions and schedule, and all the problems your team encountered/solved with our advanced reporting capabilities that offer you:
- ACD
- Call history
- Disposition and lead reports
- Schedule reports
- Multi-criteria query options
- Customizable templates
- Various report formats.
Our contact center solution is purpose-built for seamless customer interactions, integration with most CRMs on the market, and enhanced customer loyalty through excellent customer experience.
Abdelmounim Benharouga has always had a strong passion for writing and digital marketing. He started as a Digital Content Writer part of marketing department then moved to being Customer Success Manager for the African Region within the Nobelbiz team.