The importance of customer care to build brand loyalty
Every company wants to build a loyal customer base, but how do you do it? The short answer is that you need a great product, patience and excellent customer care. Customer care being the most important of the three. Loyalty is like a friendship, it can’t be forced and doesn’t happen overnight.
A great product is just the start
The road to a loyal customer base starts with a good product. And I say good not great or excellent because that’s sufficient if you follow the other steps. Whichever of the four core human desires your product is responding to -freeing up time, spending time in a valuable way, acceptance, independence - all you need is to create value in the process and you are off to a good start.
This is where loyalty begins, the customer has a need. For example they want something fun and out of the ordinary to do so they book your escape room in response to this need. But this is only the first step. Your product has to deliver on the promise it makes. Again and again and again. Reliably. And if there is a problem you have to be quick to come up with a solution and this is where you customer care comes in.
Even better customer care
Excellent customer care can make up for a lot of shortcomings, but remember that it doesn’t work the other way around. I’m going to focus on when there is an issue and just assume that you already have a great customer experience in place when there are no issues. Because if there is an issue and your customer care comes short chances are that you have lost that customer for good and by an extension you’ll also lose the custom from their friends.
First of all you have to remember that there will always be issues no matter what you do, it’s all about being prepared. The best case scenario is that you have a self service option in place where the customer can simply take care of the issue themselves.
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Let’s see a simple example
Your customer wants to add an extra player to their team for the escape room they booked. If the process in place is to pay on site for the additional team member then the best case scenario is that they can find this piece of information in their confirmation email avoiding contacting customer care all together. This will:
Reduce the workload for your customer care team
Make the customers feel at ease since you already thought about this
and as a result it will build trust towards your brand.
The following flowchart shows you the most common customer care journeys. The shorter the customer journey is for any issue the better. Whatever the issue you want them to think to themselves that you were super efficient and professional about the solution.
Things get a bit more challenging when something can’t be solved that neatly with a self service option and this is where a well trained and empowered customer care team comes in. They have to be:
empathetic towards the issues and the customer
patient even if they are explaining something for the 100th time
great at clear and concise communication
good at negotiating a satisfactory resolution
and last but not least genuinely wanting to help the customers.
You have to do a lot too to empower your customer care team. The more they can take care of themselves without going to management for approval the quicker their response time will be. And as a result, the less time the customer spends with sorting an issue the less frustrated they will be.
A customer who has an excellent experience will rave about your business. But the customers who have an issue during their experience are actually way more important to you as they are the ones who will either make sure others stay away from your business or rave about how awesome your business is even though there was an issue.
Be reliable. Repeatedly!
Every time you deliver on the promise of your product you put down a brick for your loyalty castle. Whether your product is a pair of jeans that looks good on them and doesn’t rip for years or an escape room that never fails to impress, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you deliver on that promise. Repeatedly!
Once you have done so a few times they will build emotional attachment to your products and services. Delivering on your promise is where loyalty can truly be built or broken. If they think your solution is great, they will recommend it to others. Now this is where their neck gets on the line, so this is where you really have to deliver. Once someone recommended you but you fail to deliver you are not only losing your new customer, but you are losing the loyalty of the customer who recommended you in the first place.
To sum it up
Have a great product, empower your team to deal with issues quickly and with empathy and above all deliver on your promise for a solution to their problem without a mistake. Then all you will have to do is be patient. Your customer base will grow and loyalty will follow.