Psychological triggers to convert customers into loyal brand promoters
You are already aware of the fact that in today’s market, your competitors are just one click away from your customers! Customers can easily gain access to information regarding your market performance and compare it with your competitors with utmost ease. Providing a world-class customer service that goes beyond the customers’ expectation is the key to stay on top of the hard-earned customer base.
Today’s article is going to teach entrepreneurs, managers and sales reps on how to use psychological triggers to convert their customers into loyal brand promoters. We are dividing the article into two different parts for you to easily understand.
Part 1 Customer Loyalty
81% of companies delivering an excellent customer experience are outperforming their competition
Many entrepreneurs presume that the main path to winning customer loyalty is to provide outstanding products and services at a lower price than their competitors. You might set out well while carrying out this business plan. However, you will soon burn a hole in your overall budget because it is not easy to compete with companies that are well-funded. You cannot keep up with their lower discount rates, logistic solutions, and what-nots!
The key to keep your current customer base is to provide them with world-class service. Yes, you know your service has some flaws, your product is not at par with your competition. Realize this fact and accept it. Let your customers know that how much you value their faith in your business. Provide them with customer support whenever they require because that way, they will know that you are not going to abandon them. Building faith and winning your customers’ trust is the main criteria for surviving the surge of competition the market has seen in the past decade.
As Lincoln Murphy puts it, “Don’t let customers get to the point where they’ll be a detractor in the first place; you do this by understanding their Desired Outcome and operationalizing around ensuring they achieve that”.
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning,” according to Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
Part 2 – Understanding your customer is important
If you are hoping to turn your customers into brand ambassadors, then you must read through these points.
1. Know your customers
Every customer is an individual and expects the business to see them as individuals too. Knowing your customers based on their previous conversation and purchase patterns becomes easy with a CRM.
Once you understand what your customers needs, you can plan out your outreach programs using the CRM’s email, built-in calling, and text messaging features.
With the ease of setting up workflows, automation of data collection becomes seamless. CRM software allows users to track customers buying pattern and their web form inquiries. You can easily generate customized reports and use those insights to support your sales outreach campaigns.
CRM systems allow businesses to integrate all these communication channels. The customer, based on the level of urgency selects a communication tool to reach out. Imagine a situation where your customer is facing a certain issue with your product or service. He visits your website and clicks on “Contact Us”. After getting redirected to that page, he has an option to drop an email, request a callback, or directly call your Toll-free number and drop voicemails if your lines are busy.
Use case one
The customer calls on the Toll-free number mentioned on your website. Depending on the traffic flow you either accept the call or it goes to your voicemail. Whether you answer the calls or not, the waiting time can be made less mundane with the inclusion of thematic music. You can make it more interacting by letting the customer know how many callers are in the queue so that they can decide if they want to wait or drop a voicemail.
If the customer opts to drop a voicemail, your workflow will trigger an acknowledgment email so that the customer knows that you are aware of the voicemail. The same workflow will assign the task of call back request to one of the support agents.
The best part of using the CRM system is that it keeps all the communication neatly stacked in a timeline. You can take a quick glance and know the history of the communication with any customer with a few clicks.
Use case two
The customer decides to drop you an email, explaining the issue he/she is facing with your product. If the email has arrived post your working hours, the CRM system workflow will trigger an email, mentioning the same to the customer, informing him that his email will be replied once your executives resume office.
2. Involve your customers
A CRM system enables you to schedule calls, emails and text messages to your contacts. You can easily create templates for both email and messages and save them inside the CRM software. You have to go beyond the nuances of traditional customer service to make them stay loyal to your brand.
Interacting with your customers on a regular basis allows you to always stay at the back of their mind. Make them feel more involved in your journey and always encourage them to send their feedbacks. If the customers are enjoying your services, ask them to tweet about you, send out templates of your product or services and ask them to share it on their Facebook posts.
Positive word of mouth from your customers allow you to grow your brand. Once you successfully influence your customers to spread a positive word about you in their own circle, send out rewards, greeting on their special occasions and gift them with gift cards. Make sure you like and comment on their Facebook posts that mentions you. Retweeting their tweets about you and your product or services makes them feel special.
3. Provide a superior and customer-centric service
Yes, you have an outstanding product and top of the line service, however, once the purchase is made by the customers, the thrill dies down.
What you can do about their customer service experience makes them come back to make another purchase and recommend you to their inner circle.
If you are not able to capitalize on your current customer base, ask yourself these questions.
- Does your customer service stand out from your competitors?
- Are you treating your customers as individuals?
- Each individual has their own traits? Are you perfectly differentiating your customer base?
- How successful is your customer support team in providing the right solution to your customers?
- Does your customer support team make extra efforts in maintaining a successful client-relationship even after the sale?
These are questions are worth millions of dollars, if you truly understand the worth of your customers for the survival of your business.
Having a CRM system by your side, you can successfully bifurcate the customers, based on the last communication you had with them, and also find out which channel was used for the communication.
Set automated workflows to customers who have not reached out to you for a certain period of time, since your last communication. Don’t let your busy schedule ruin your customer relationship. After all, you have spent money, emotions and time in acquiring them.
Conclusion
Today, the customers have better knowledge about the information you are collecting in regard to them. However, if you are not able to capitalize on the data you have with you then all your hardships were for nothing.
Identify your customer base using a CRM software, bifurcate the brand promoters from the general crowd. Plan rewards for those who are promoters, and make sure the general crowd is seeing this, by means of monthly newsletters and text message promotions. Mention your most ardent followers over the social media, make them feel special.
Keep track of each activity using CRM software that you or your support staff does against the customers’ queries and makes sure you never miss an important client request that pushes them towards your competition.
Author Bio
Saptarshi Das, a writer with an uncommon funny bone and a knack for perfection. Saptarshi has been writing about how Salesmate CRM helps small and medium business, for a long time now!
He is a content writer and a geek in the digital marketing sense of it, who likes to spend most of his time researching ways technology is influencing your daily life (positively). Connect with him on LinkedIn.