Digital transformation has fundamentally changed the way organizations engage and interact with their customers in nearly every way. Marketing is no longer a one-way street, but a busy town square where customers speak to companies, and another in an always-on environment, which makes it more and more difficult to drive customer loyalty.
This paradigm shift in marketing has created massive opportunities for companies who were quick to adapt. In 2018, Forrester found that companies that lead in customer experience outperformed the rest of the S&P 500 by 32%. At the same time, Watermark consulting found that customers are seven times more likely to purchase from companies with a great customer experience and 15x more likely to spread positive word of mouth.
Unfortunately, creating an incredible customer engagement program doesn’t happen overnight. As marketers, you’re up against changing algorithms, new rules, and shifting techniques that can make representing your brand the right way to the right people an overwhelming task.
Luckily, there are simple steps any organization can take right now to build the foundations of a great customer engagement program that authentically builds customer loyalty.
How to drive customer loyalty via digital touchpoints
Step 1: Get Your Own House in Order
Like any relationship, the key to lasting love is to first understand your strengths and weaknesses. The first step to building a strong customer experience will be to break down the silos in your business and build strong connections across departments. Reach out to your marketing teams, your customer service teams, your tech support teams, and any other involved parties that engage with your customers.
Once the lines of communication are open, make sure each team is aligned behind the same strategy and how each department plans to execute that strategy. Nothing is worse than when an upset customer reaches out to support to solve an issue and receives three marketing emails before the problem is resolved.
As you think about your next digital campaign, plan to put in the legwork of building excellent company-wide communication ahead of time—and then watch the following two steps to building customer loyalty fall into place.
Step 2: Understand Your Customer
Once you have your house in order, you can begin to look outward. The second layer in inspiring customer loyalty is to truly understand your customer.
Understanding your customer involves knowing their habits with your product or service as well as why your customer relies on you. When you do, you can be sure every piece of content, and each new product or service is offered for the benefit of your customer and not any other outside considerations.
After accomplishing step 1, you should reach out to your customer care teams and learn from their interactions with customers to understand pain points, see opportunities, and combine that with data you’ve pulled from market research and social listening.
Step 3: Engage in Your Customer’s Terms
The final layer of fostering customer loyalty through digital is to gain an intimate understanding of how your customer wants to engage with you. On social, consumers are in charge of both how and where they communicate with brands. The unpleasant truth is that consumers often take to social to vent and express their concerns to brands—positive brand interactions initiated by consumers are comparatively few and far between.
However, this shouldn’t scare you away, in fact, brands that can adopt a thick skin and demonstrate their understanding, ability to listen, and problem-solving capabilities can add value to their customers by engaging purposefully and genuinely.
By doing so, these brands will develop real relationships with their customers that will lead to loyalty. Even if you failed your customer in some way, and even if you aren’t able to offer them their desired outcome, often just demonstrating that you care can make a big difference in your customer’s loyalty.
Creating an incredible customer engagement program that drives customer loyalty doesn’t happen overnight, but these three steps will help you build a strong foundation to grow.
