How to Build a Customer Loyalty Program to Retain Customers

It’s never an easy task for businesses to earn customer loyalty and retain them. With customers driven by their own desires and priorities, a business can only capture their attention if its products or services can help them fulfil those desires and priorities. It does not matter if the customer has had a positive interaction with the business in the past. As long as the pricing and product quality of a competitor is better, then the customer is very likely to take it. Therefore, businesses need to adopt customer retention strategies such as customer loyalty programs to facilitate repeat purchases. Here are a couple of suggestions.

1. Adopt A Multi-Channel Customer Service System

To have a good customer retention rate, a business should be in tune with its customers' needs. A multi-channel customer service system is a good way to retain customers. By offering a multi-channel customer service strategy in which communication between a business and its customers takes place on several different channels, customers will have better access to your service team, and this in turn creates more interaction. This can be done on various mediums, such as the company’s social media platforms, email, live chat, help desk, or even a physical concierge centre. Essentially, the more a business interacts with its customers, the better the opportunity to win their favour.

To achieve customer retention, a business must first strive for customer engagement. Which is why businesses should seriously consider equipping their customer service departments with hotlines, live chat tools, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, so that they can cover a multitude of channels at one go. Additionally, AI software such as chatbots can mitigate the workload of organising and distributing incoming requests without having to hire more employees.

2. Reward Your Customers

Consumers who pledge customer loyalty to a brand are the most valuable. This is where the importance of a loyalty program becomes evident in building customer loyalty. To boost customer retention rate and profitability, a company must always give the best in value to its best customers. In other words, whoever spends more will contribute to the generation of better profits for that business, and thus that customer should be rewarded for his or her loyalty by enjoying the benefits of that value creation. This essentially creates a customer retention loop, making them more loyal and profitable. The rationale is simple, if the customers already enjoy patronising your brand, all the more you should give them another reason to do so. You might argue that offering customer retention incentives is costly and has no immediate return of investment, but looking at it from another perspective, loyalty programs offer benefits to businesses that extend beyond just one or two transactions. 

Leading The Way

It’s crucial that leadership teams of companies undertake extensive training to ensure they understand the principles of customer experience management. In order to improve customer experience, it is vital that the leadership as well as the employees have a clear picture of the customer journey, so that everyone is on the same page. DHL Express is one such company, as it undertook a comprehensive and programmatic overhaul of its customer experience that started with its senior management. Essentially what the organisation undertook as its customer retention marketing strategy was to define a clear and compelling vision, a common purpose, and a value proposition for itself. They then went on to define the customer journey and ensure that there was continuous improvement of it. Such high-quality customer service along with a clearly defined performance management system will help any organisation develop a higher chance in retaining customers.

With DHL Express as your logistics partner, you will find a team of specialists taking care of your needs from start to finish. Our customer service team is ever ready to assist customers with their end-to-end deliveries through our value-added extra services such as shipment insurance and proactive tracking with verbal updates.

Our user-friendly shipping app such as MyDHL+,is an industry-leading global shipping application that brings new levels of speed and simplicity to the often confusing and complicated cross-border shipping process. In addition, we also provide shipping and customs-related questions through our 24/7 Live Chat support. You can speak to one of our live agents at any time when you have a query.

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