Many of our blogs talk about taking the right steps to ensure lasting customer loyalty as a way to spur long-term success. After all, loyal customers are the ones who keep coming back and spreading positive word-of-mouth to their friends, family, and greater social network. That’s the essence of having a great business reputation: when properly developed, it does all of your advertising’s heavy lifting.
Self-Evaluation
When managing a business over the long haul, we might first consider what you’ve done over the last year. You might ask questions about whether sales and profits are up year-over-year, whether your staff is performing well overall, whether you’re proud of everything the business has accomplished, and whether the business is actually growing.
But also important is the short term, such as the last quarter or even the last month. In that timeframe, you might analyze how well a promotion or new sales/customer-service process is working, whether your employees have been happy with the direction of the company, how they’re managed, your profits and losses, and so on.
This is all important, of course, but while forward thinking is a requirement, it bears reminding ourselves that building for the future begins today. The here and now is the place and time where we sow the seeds of our future success. To that end, we should always self-evaluate ourselves moment to moment, asking whether we’re doing everything we can to earn the return business and referrals of our customers.
Loyalty is Earned, and Re-Earned
When we think on a moment-to-moment basis, we remind ourselves that earning customer loyalty is a never-ending process. Customers only remain loyal so long as they feel like we remain loyal to them. Thus, with every decision, with every interaction, we must ask a simple question: “is what I’m doing right now going to help or hurt the likelihood that this customer will come back the next time he or she needs something?”
The answer isn’t as simple as giving customers whatever they want. That’s not what sales or customer service is actually about: instead, it’s about caring enough to figure out what they really need. This means asking qualifying questions, listening for comprehension without interruption, expressing empathy, and being thoughtful with the kinds of offers you make.
When customers feel like you actually have their best interests at heart—not simply the desire to extort the most money out of them or the desire to invest the least effort to just get them out of the store—that’s when you earn their loyalty. That’s how you lay the foundation for that future success we all strive for.
Foundation
A safe, dependable building requires a strong foundation. So it is with successful businesses, as well. The companies that build upon a foundation of earning customer loyalty through high quality customer service and a great experience, the ones that work towards maintaining a healthy company culture with happy employees, are the ones who can withstand whatever the winds of change bring.
Unlike a building’s foundation, however, your business’s foundation requires daily maintenance, as though it were a living thing in need of constant nurture and support. You can only do this evaluation and improvement, and the very best way to do that is through the use of mystery shopping.
Is there really a better way to understand the minds of the average consumer, to solicit their real-world feedback for actionable data, than through mystery shopping? If so, we haven’t found it. And we would know if there were: at The Brandt Group, we have dedicated ourselves to working with our clients to develop the very best customer experiences, the strongest employee cultures, and the most effective leadership teams possible for over 30 years. Countless businesses like yours have used our services to evaluate and train their staffs, developed their brand reputations, and ultimately enhanced their profits in that time—all with the aim of maximizing customer loyalty over the long haul.
If your business is ready to begin forging that kind of long-lasting relationship with its customers, let’s not delay. Remember what we said before: we sow the seeds of our future success in the here and now.
Call or drop us a line from our contact page today.
