How easy or tough is it to retain a customer and make him stick to your brand?

When you run an e-commerce company, it’s very important to have a customer loyalty strategy. Finding one client and making him buy once is tough and it involves a huge cost. And if all the cost leads to a one-time purchase, it’s useless. The expenditure and effort are justified only if the customer stays with you for a long time.

Customer loyalty program

Think of Amazon Prime. The customer pays upfront for a year’s membership for some services like express delivery and free shipping. And he feels he should stick to Amazon because he has invested in the Amazon Prime membership. He does not get the perks that he gets with Prime on any other site. So, he sticks to the site at least for a year. And that is a brilliant customer loyalty strategy.

Over deliver

Meeting the customer’s expectation is passé. Customers are overjoyed when they are shipped their products sooner than promised. They can be reached with personalized messages in the shipments, great packaging and of course, a warranty or guarantee thrown in. A small bonus like a key chain or a ceramic mug with your logo also makes a huge difference. A satisfied customer also brings in referrals.

Customer Service

We all have our moments of failure. An e-commerce organization has more such instances. Customers call in with problems in their delivery schedule, faulty products, wrong products, unsatisfactory products, and negative reviews… the list goes on. How do you make the customer stick to you despite the dissatisfaction in a single purchase? Enter customer service. A customized mail to address an issue, a phone call on time, polite conversation, promise to resolve issues and swift action can do wonders to retain the customer.

Stay with the flow

There are e-commerce organizations that come up every day. We see several advertisements for the site. We get flooded with flyers, online ads, pop-ups and newspaper ads. Six months later, it’s all forgotten. We probably ordered from them once, it could have been a satisfactory deal. But why has the site vanished into thin air now? it is very important to stand tall among peers. Keep upgrading: everything from site layout, products to the background technology. Otherwise, the site loses steam soon. And customers tend to find greener pastures.

Love your customers

Customer service is flooded with mails and calls from irate customers. Show them some love, and you will be rewarded richly. Resolve issues. Send them mailers on their birthdays. Thank them for giving you business. Make sure you reward top customers with special offers. Stay in touch with them. That makes a huge difference.