What makes your customers fall in love with your brand?

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Do you know that a 5% increase in customer retention can increase your profits anywhere from 25-95%?

In this age of the customer, when customers are the lifeblood of any business, brands are making efforts to make their customers happy with their services, products, or experience.

While customer dissatisfaction is not something businesses want to discuss, but it is something they all face and should focus on.

It is crucial to analyze what is wrong, how to change it, and then work on it. But, if you actually focus on it, it really is not that difficult. You need to understand your customer’s expectations, involve them in your ideation, meet their expectations, collect feedback, offer services, and create better experiences to make them happy.

What is customer happiness?

Marketing today is not just about onboarding new customers but it’s about creating delightful customer experiences for brands’ existing and new customers.

Customer happiness is all about providing a happy and satisfying customer experience to your customers and meeting their expectations at the right time with the right intention.

Make sure they not only buy your product or service again but spread the word through referrals or social media.

According to the Peppers & Rogers Group’s 2009 Customer Experience Maturity Monitor report, 81% of companies that provide great customer experiences and customer satisfaction do much better than their competitors.

11 ways to make your customers insanely happy with your brand

1. Create a customer loyalty program:

Implementing a loyalty program to reward your most loyal customers is one of the best ways to drive value outside the buying experience.

It fosters a mutually-beneficial relationship between your brand and the customer where the customer is offered regular incentives to engage with your brand. It is critical to make sure that your loyalty program is simple and easy to understand by the users.

Here’s How to Calculate the ROI of your CX program

For example, a point system where the customers earn points for sharing any content on social media or referring a person within their network.

Google Pay, offers a scratch card to its customers on making a transaction or adding a friend to the network.

Source: CoolzTricks

2. Provide proactive customer service:

Customers don’t mind the issues but they resent the inconvenience they face while reaching out to a support team. Stay one step ahead of your customer to offer proactive resolutions and create seamless customer experiences.

Remove roadblocks before the customers encounter them. Analyze your survey tickets, identify the common customer problems, and roll out the fixes immediately.

3. Create an emotional connection with your customers:

It’s not about what you sell but how you sell it. The best customer experiences are achieved when you create an emotional connection with your customers. According to a recent Harvard Business Review study “The New Science of Customer Emotions“, emotionally driven customers are at least three times more likely to recommend your product or service, three times more likely to re-purchase and 44% rarely or never shop around.

For instance, when one of Zappos’s customers was late on returning a pair of shoes as her mother passing away,

Zappos took care of the return shipping and had a courier pick up the shoes without cost. Also, the next day, the customer arrived home and found a bouquet of flowers with a condolence note from the brand.

4. Actually listen to your customer:

The best way to make your customers happy is by knowing and meeting their expectations, and listening to your customer will help you get a clear picture of their intentions and expectations from your brand.

Try to understand what they are looking for, what their pain areas are, how much are they willing to pay for the solution, and so on.

It is important to align your brand’s mission with your customer expectations, and what is the best way to know of their expectations than by simply asking them.

5. Seek feedback from the disgruntled customers:

Do you know that the best market research comes from your dissatisfied customers?

Be truly inquisitive towards your customers’ issues and complaints.

When you face disgruntled customers, be open to their criticism, accept your mistakes, listen patiently, provide them your undivided attention, and look for patterns. Taking customer feedback shows your customers that your brand keeps customer satisfaction at the forefront.

The then Senior Vice President of Hyatt Residency, Sara Kearney, stated in an interview that the Company primarily shifted its focus to consumer feedback in developing its brand value. This, in turn, aided the Company to grow and remodel by responding to the Customer requirements.

6. Provide a personal touch:

Personalize your customers’ shopping experience. Start with using their first name in the email or the conversation and then create personalized experiences for them. Collect their name, email addresses, and birthdays.

Welcome them back when they visit you again or wish them on their birthdays.

Moments like these create a great customer experience and show your customer that you genuinely care about them.

For instance, Netflix with the help of data science and analysis offering remarkable personalized experiences to its customers and ruling the entertainment industry.


Source: Techcrunch

7. Conduct events/ webinars to increase customer engagement:

Conduct events and keep your customers connected to the Brand even when they are not availing any services or buying any products.

This increases customer engagement and creates a lasting impression on the mind of the customer which is beyond money’s worth.

For instance, during the lockdown owing to Covid-19, LawSikho, a legal learning platform, conducted multiple Webinars to keep its customer base occupied. It, in turn, saw a massive increase in customer traffic, therefore, increasing prospective customers.

Further, Myntra introduced online fashion advice by Celebrity Stylists along with Myntra Fashion Superstar and Celeb Talks to keep the customers engaged even when they don’t make any purchase.


Source: Myntra

8. Social Media Campaigns:

In the era of technological advancements, posting social proofs such as “Happy Customer Reviews” and introducing social media campaigns with rewards for the participants have significantly contributed to the brand’s growth.

In an article published by the Bain & Company, it was revealed that the customers who are connected with the brands over social media are more likely to spend 40% more money as compared to other customers.

For instance, amidst the lockdown, Asian Paints started a campaign on Instagram inviting its viewers to use the #HarGharKuchKehtaHain and to list their activities of recreation during the weekend to promote the idea to stay indoors. The campaign was run with the aid of influencers.

Source: Asian Paints Instagram Handle

9. Apologize and make amends:

It is human nature to err. No brand can function at zero or no failures or mistakes.

However, to maintain customer happiness and loyalty it is essential that you own your mistakes, apologize for them, and make amends. While avoiding a mistake may be inevitable, making amends to ensure the customer has a great experience is always possible.

For instance, Ajio, an online shopping website, offered 200 store credits to its customers in the event of cancellation of any product at their end along with an apology email.

Source: Quora

10. Provide exceptional customer support:

Providing an exceptional customer support system is of great importance. Efficient customer service representatives who understand the consumers, sympathize with them, and show them they care while resolving a dispute, are more likely to leave a lasting impression.

Live chats, instant mail updates, prompt resolution on social media, and calls can be a few ways to efficiently redress customer disputes and provide exceptional customer support.
In the American Express 2017 Service Barometer, a whopping 66% of customers stated that they did not complete a transaction owing to bad consumer service.

11. Ensure customer satisfaction at each step:

There are various stages of availing a service or purchasing a product. From the initial search to the consideration to payment, returns, and exchange, the ease of purchase and efficient support at each step fosters additional customer satisfaction and happy experiences.

According to a study, 72% of the customers are willing to spend an additional 16% on great customer care. Uber, an online cab booking platform offers customer support through in-built app options


Source: Uber

Conclusion:

Customer Happiness is a long persevering process that gives a brand an edge over its competitors and Happy Customers are a reflection of the brand’s quality, commitment, and consistency.

Making customers happy is a direct measure of retention and could be a great goal towards analyzing if your business is growing in the right direction.
Customer happiness is the first step toward customer loyalty and building a customer-centric brand. Therefore, it is important that brands take requisite steps to plan, build, and scale a truly customer-centric business.

4 COMMENTS

  1. Hi Piyush: thank you for this post. My observation on #6, Provide a Personal Touch, is that a few of your recommendations are actually rapport-breakers for me. Not because they are bad recommendations, but because they are almost always – maybe always – done poorly. Disclosure: I am among the baby boom generation. Digital natives might not share my views.

    1. Using my name in an email and other communication. Mostly comes across as tinny. “New articles for Andrew . . .” reads the subject line from one organization that regularly sends me content. I go by “Andy,” so seeing “Andrew” is well . . . not right. At least for me. Possible that my age peers named William (Bill), Michael (Mike), etc. feel the same way. Maybe not. But it grates on me every time I see it. In addition, it makes a difference where and how my name is embedded in content. An example of one done just wrong: “Would it matter to you, Andrew, if you could increase your company’s productivity for [activity], by 40%?” Ugh. Most recipients know it’s an algorithm shoving your name in the body of the communication drawn from a database of prospects. Why bother? Just wow me with the subject.

    2. Birthdays. Unless you know me personally, don’t send me a birthday message. I’m fine without it. When the purpose of the communication is transparently to sell a product or service, birthday wishes come across as insincere. It also begs the question, “how did this company know my birthday? I don’t recall providing it.” – never a good way to open a marketing relationship.

    3. For me, the putative data science behind suggested purchases has been more of a CX millstone rather than a benefit. The most memorable – and possibly most valuable – purchases I have made have been based on recommendations from a friend or colleague for a product or service that I never would have learned about if my history of past purchases were factored into the recommendation. This is especially true for movies and and other content accessed online. Often, I think the algorithmic assumption skews too heavily toward “if you selected [X], you must want more of it!” Very often, people crave something new that they never would have considered.

  2. Hu Piyush
    A few years ago, ad agency Havas carried out a survey that had a rather surprising finding; that customers either wouldn’t notice or would easily replace 75% of brands if they literally disappeared tomorrow. Think about that. What it is really saying is that a large majority of customers simply don’t care about you, or your brand. And you can forget about getting them to fall in love with your brand!
    The fact is, customers don’t care about your brand and to make things worse, Sharpe & Romaniuk’s research shows they are no more loyal to your brand than they are to any other brands in the same category.
    We really do need to rethink the fundamentals of brands and loyalty.
    Best regards, Graham

  3. Hello Graham,

    Thank you for sharing those thought-provoking insights. The survey by Havas and the research by Sharpe & Romaniuk certainly paint a stark picture of consumer attitudes towards brands. It’s a powerful reminder that brand loyalty isn’t guaranteed and that the majority of customers engage with brands out of convenience or necessity rather than loyalty or love.

    This information does indeed suggest that it’s time for a fundamental reassessment of how we approach branding and customer loyalty. Brands must strive to be indispensable by being more customer-centric, focusing on creating meaningful experiences, and truly standing for something that resonates with their audience. It’s about fostering a genuine connection that goes beyond the transactional and providing unique value that can’t be easily replicated by competitors.

    Your comment underscores the importance of innovation, authenticity, and relevance in today’s market. It’s a call to action for brands to not only understand what their customers want but to anticipate their needs and exceed their expectations in a way that creates a lasting impact.

    Best regards
    Piyush

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