25 ways to earn customer loyalty

Customer loyalty is essential to any brand's long-term survival. Without retaining customers, companies would be fighting an uphill battle.

Generating lasting loyalty among customers can be tricky. Even if you’ve been able to keep your customers' attention for years, the emergence of a new brand with a stronger commitment to satisfying your customers' needs could put their loyalty at risk. In fact, according to the 2020 CallMiner Churn Index, nearly three-fourths (74%) of consumers will switch to another provider after a single poor contact center experience.

You must be prepared to support your customers and provide an exceptional omnichannel customer experience across every stage of their journey. This involves mastering a precarious balancing act in which you provide convenience, simplicity and consistency to inspire confidence in your company's ability to deliver.

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Customer loyalty keeps businesses afloat

Brands looking to last are implementing customer loyalty boosting strategies in ever greater numbers. Many of these strategies converge in crafting customized customer experiences with deeper emotional appeal. The importance of digging deeper into the relationships your customers have with your brand has come to light recently with research indicating as much as a 25 to 100% increase in profit per customer can be expected from a relatively modest 5% improvement in customer loyalty.

Connecting with your customers across channels and championing their interests can help improve the loyalty they demonstrate to your brand, but there are many additional tactics worth trying out as well. We've compiled some of the best examples of strategies and ideas for improving customer loyalty below.

How products and services can boost customer loyalty

1. Leverage interaction analytics to evaluate Customer Effort Score (CES). “Another way to assess CES is by tracking indicators of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with resolving issues through unsolicited feedback on all interactions. As Gartner points out, reducing customer effort in service interactions helps to build customer loyalty in service organizations. In fact, customer effort is the strongest driver of customer loyalty, and customers want quick and easy resolutions to their problems when they contact your company.” - What is Customer Effort Score?, CallMiner; Twitter: @CallMiner

2. Products must align with customer needs at all stages of growth. "One of the chief reasons customers lose their loyalty to a business is that their needs changed but the business products or services did not." - Pro Tips for Improving Customer Loyalty, Universal Funding Corporation; Twitter: @UniversalFactor

3. Anticipate customer needs and act on them. "Calling your customer and letting them know you are having a sale soon on a product you know they love and will soon need (for example they purchase a special skin cream monthly and you call to remind them its almost that time of the month when they run out of the product and you are happy to hold one aside for them or let them know which day it will be on sale so they get the best price) Do your best to anticipate if a customer may need something extra to enjoy your product/services and provide that to them before they have to take the time to reach out to you." - 9 Tips To Increase Customer Loyalty, Caspian Services; Twitter: @CaspianServices

4. Try omnichannel customer engagement for stronger retention. "Companies with strong omnichannel customer engagement strategies retain an average 89% of their customers, compared to those with weak omnichannel strategies, which only retain 33%." - Chelsea Woodland, 24 Strategies to Build Maintain Customer Loyalty [Plus Examples!], Hitachi Solutions; Twitter: @HitachiSolUS

5. Build positive customer experiences first and foremost. "81 percent of customers say a positive customer service experience increases the likelihood they’ll make another purchase. [...] Your customer experience includes everything about the way your customers interact with you, from the moment they first land on your website to when they call and ask your customer service team for assistance." - Sarah Olson, 7 ways to build customer loyalty (and why it's important), Zendesk; Twitter: @Zendesk

6. Reduce friction and increase convenience across the board. "Unlike customer retention, customer loyalty measures how satisfied your customers are with their brand experience and how likely they would be to share that experience with others. [...] The customer experience is key to loyalty, so by removing the 'friction' to make a more streamlined process, you're solving for the customer and investing in customer retention." - Sophia Bernazzani,13 Ways to Improve Customer Loyalty and Retention, HubSpot; Twitter: @HubSpot, @soph_bern

7. Emphasize pre-sale and post-sale customer care. "The customer-centric strategy involves providing a great customer experience before and after the sale to promote customer loyalty and get your customers to return. [...] While it all seems like a lot of work, becoming a customer-centric company makes sense for the business according to Deloitte's research, customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than companies that don’t focus on customers." - Top 11 Ways to Increase Customer Loyalty in 2022, Gravitec

8. Personalize your services to suit your customers. "Everything comes down to the following: customer loyalty should be carefully developed along with the company culture of customer service. [...] After summing up all tips and data-proven researches, you see - customer loyalty is developed and retained by a personalized, quality service where people work for achieving win-win situations." - Anastasia Savelieva, 10 Ways to Increase and Retain Customer Loyalty, Help Desk Migration; Twitter: @HDMigration

9. Align company interests with customer interests at every turn. "The fact that your company is interested in customer's interests more than in business itself will increase your customer loyalty. [...] And it also helps to attract new customers when your products and services are recommended by satisfied customers. [...] Since loyal customers help your business grow, such people should be treated with extra care." - Ramon Ray, 10 Strategies to Boost Sales Through Customer Loyalty - SmartHustle.com, Smart Hustle; Twitter: @ramonray

10. Connect on a personal level to level-up loyalty. "People often confuse customer satisfaction with customer loyalty, but the two are very different things. [...] To build a loyal customer base, you must also connect with your customers on a personal level and put the customer first." - Ten Tips to Increase Customer Loyalty, Atlanta Small Business Network; Twitter: @MyASBN

11. Rewards programs can be profitable and promote loyalty. "A customer loyalty program, often known as a rewards program, is a customer retention strategy that encourages customers to continue purchasing from your brand rather than competitors. [...] Consider this customer relationship statistics: Simply expressed, customer loyalty refers to a consumer's inclination to regularly contact or purchase from a particular business. [...] However, prioritizing customer care for all of your clients new and returning fosters an appealing environment for customer loyalty to flourish." - Emilia Vidadievna, 25 Strategies To Improve Customer Loyalty, AI bees; Twitter: @ai_bees

12. Differentiation is key to creating lasting loyalty. "While almost every company measures customer satisfaction via some kind of customer feedback, only a few brands are able to build customer loyalty. [...] The very fact that a company is more interested in the customers need than its business, will go a long way in building customer loyalty. [...] Brands like Starbucks, Apple and Harley Davidson are testimony to the fact that a differentiated customer experience could go a long way in building customer loyalty." - Kushal Dev, 10 Ways To Improve Customer Loyalty, CustomerThink; Twitter: @customerthink

13. Consider the role loyal customers play in promoting your brand. "There are so many reasons to cultivate loyal customers that if it ever comes down to getting new customers vs retaining customers, most businesses should choose the latter. [...] The RAPID loyalty framework focuses on the three main ways you can grow your business: by retaining existing customers, by gaining new customers through referrals and word of mouth, and by purchasing more of the product." -

Improve customer loyalty and retention with 12 simple tips - VoIPstudio, VoIPstudio; Twitter: @VoIPstudio

14. Leverage emerging tech to boost convenience and build loyalty. "Bond, a brand loyalty firm, has found that 95% of loyalty program members want to engage with their brand's program through new and emerging technology - think AI, virtual reality (VR), mobile (contactless) shopping experiences, and more. [...] When building brand loyalty, it is important to consider how leveraging loyalty program technology can also help to eliminate wait times, and increase convenience." - Ross Malpass, 7 Tips to Build Customer Loyalty, Ombori; Twitter: @ombori

How your team can improve customer loyalty

15. Make sure your entire team is prepped to deliver stellar service. "If you only have a few good people that can deliver great customer service every time, but the rest of your team flounders, you don't have a culture of customer experience. [...] Create a plan to improve customer service at every stage, and implement clear procedures for customer care reps to follow." - 5 Tips to Improve Client Loyalty With Customer Service, CallProof; Twitter: @callproof

16. Solve issues quickly to keep your customers. "There are plenty of instances when customers who have previously complained give rave reviews about how fast their issues have been resolved by the business and how considerate and empathetic the customer service representatives have been." - Trevor Michael, How Good Customer Service Can Help Improve Customer Loyalty and Retention, Tweak Your Biz; Twitter: @TweakYourBiz

17. Prioritize customer care for all customers. "But when you prioritize customer care for all your clientele - new and longtime customers alike - you create the right conditions for customer loyalty to flourish." - 7 Ways To Improve Customer Loyalty A Guide For Businesses, Sling; Twitter: @getsling_com

18. Gather feedback after every interaction. "Whether or not a customer remains loyal to a brand is often determined by the customer experience. [...] With every customer service interaction whether that’s through a chatbot or directly through your team, ensure that at the end of that interaction you ask for customer feedback." - How customer service impacts loyalty and how to improve your strategy, Venntov; Twitter: @venntov

19. Consider the customer's perspective when shaping your support processes. "Companies are increasingly realizing that customer loyalty begins with customer experience, and successful companies are reevaluating their service from the customer's perspective to learn how they can improve their responsiveness and increase their overall positive customer experiences." - 7 Ways To Improve Customer Loyalty in 2022, ChatSupport; Twitter: @chatsupportaw

20. Agent autonomy is paramount for promoting lasting loyalty among customers. "A big part of ensuring happy customer service workers is your customer service policy: Trusting your employees to make the right decisions in a complex situation enables them to answer customers and resolve issues with confidence. [...] If your customer service reps have to advocate for customer rights, customer experience will suffer and you will be losing time and money in unnecessary escalations." - 7 Ways to use customer service to increase loyalty, Metrilo; Twitter: @GetMetrilo

21. Efficiency matters for customer service processes to prove effective. "You might have some fantastic customer-facing strategies in place, but if your internal customer service representatives aren’t efficient then it’s incredibly unlikely that your customer service program will be effective." - Randy Clapp, Customer Service Strategies: How to Increase Customer Loyalty, Advantage Communications; Twitter: @advantage_call

22. Simplifying support and improving convenience contributes greatly to loyalty. "To increase the customers' loyalty and provide extra value, there should be additional conveniences that make the life of customers easier to encourage them to return to your business, such as user-friendly communication platforms and well-developed complaint system." - Lena Radosavljevic, 7 Ways Customer Service Advisor Can Increase Customer Loyalty, Helpy.io; Twitter: @helpyapp

23. A feedback loop should be coupled with quick action as well. "Using a feedback loop to capture, analyse and improve you can quickly start making organisational changes that will help increase customer loyalty. [...] If you are giving feedback continuously it’s important to also be making necessary changes and improvements at the same pace - customers do not want to wait a year to see action!" - Claire Moseley, How to improve customer loyalty with customer feedback, ViewPoint; Twitter: @ViewPointSmiley

24. Make email correspondence a priority - it remains relevant to many customers. "According to Forrester, 54 of customers used email for customer service in 2018, making it the most used digital channel for customer service." - Brittany Hodak, 25 Ways To Improve Customer Loyalty And Satisfaction, BrittanyHodak.com; Twitter: @BrittanyHodak

25. Bad experiences break customer relationships more than any other factors combined. "According to consumer research, 71% of customers who end business relationships do so because of a negative customer service experience." - Andrew Wallace, 9 proven ways to increase customer loyalty through improved customer experience, SmileBack