How to keep your customers coming back

Building customer loyalty is a key challenge for any retailer. It is necessary to ensure current customers come back to you for their future purchases to ensure a constant stream of revenue, on top of new customers.

There are a million and one ways in which retailers can seek to develop customer loyalty, but one way of considering it is to think in terms of two areas. First – you need to offer an outstanding product. And second, you need to offer an outstanding customer experience.

We’re going to focus less on the first area today. That’s a task for your buyers and procurement managers, your designers and developers. It’s about ensuring that you sell the best quality products to the right people at the right price. Here, we’re most interested in that second category – the experiential category.

Excellence in customer experience

The tricky thing is, an outstanding customer experience looks different in different settings. For a luxury brand, it is vital for the in-store customer experience to be similarly high-end, which can mean anything from designer fixtures and fittings to a really high ratio of staff to customers. For other brands, convenience may be king, in which case careful management of stock, and a cleverly-designed store layout might be the primary concern. In other words, you need to tailor your retail experience to the kinds of customers you have (and want to keep) and the drivers they have for shopping with you above anyone else.

Nevertheless, there are some experiential factors which are common to all retailers, across all sectors and both online and offline. For example…

Communicate clearly

Clearly and effective engagement is at the heart of many long-term customer relationships. Yes, some customers will keep coming back if they particularly love your product and it is something they need to continually renew – but many others will need a gentle nudge. Building an effective mailing list and email marketing strategy, optimising your social media and even focusing on staff training to ensure that instore, customers feel engaged and helped, can all be powerful ways of building loyalty.

Reward those who keep coming back

Everyone loves a reward, after all! Loyalty cards, bonus offers for repeat purchases, special offers reserved for those on your mailing list – these are all well-established and highly effective means of building long-term customer relationships and helping those who have shopped with you to feel valued. The mechanism that will best sort your retailer depends on the segment you operate in, but the possibilities are vast.

Consider POS finance

Point of sale (POS) finance options can be a fantastic point of difference for retailers, as we discovered when we researched our report on the future of consumer credit lending. 27% of the people we interviewed had never used credit to buy anything, yet a hefty 78% of people said they would consider purchasing a product in this way. However, consumer frustrations are high when it comes to applying for credit, which means that if you are going to offer POS finance, you need to think very carefully about making it a simple and seamless process for the customer.

We have designed our solution with your customers in mind – our form is very quick to fill in, and 99% of customers who apply for POS finance with us at your checkout will get an instant, automatic response, as opposed to just 70% for many other providers.

Speak with our team today to see how we can help you build customer loyalty with innovative finance options.