Customer Loyalty, Essay Example

 The acquisition of a customer is a difficult task but retaining that customer is more effort consuming albeit economically fruitful in the long haul. This is where the term Customer Loyalty comes into play. In simple terms, Customer Loyalty is the likeliness of consumers to persist with a specific business enterprise, bearing in mind, their previously good experience with them. Influential factors in product or service satisfaction include good performance, convenience or familiarity with the brand name. Mental outlook and behavioral tendencies also determine the inclination of a customer towards a specific brand favoring it over others so as to employ their services or purchase their merchandise.

Customer loyalty involves not only attracting a suitable customer but getting them to buy as well.  Not just once, it encourages buying consistently and that too in higher quantities. It also entails feeling positive about the buying experience leading to a need in propagating that feeling. This in turn brings in more customers. In some cases, customer loyalty is signified by the number of people that buy more than one product.  At other times, customer loyalty is represented by the number of individuals that continuously employ the services of the same company for their needs. For example, using the same designer every time one needed a blog design is 100% loyalty.  Similarly buying 5 out of 5 products, all from the same service is considered 100% customer loyalty too. The importance of Customer Loyalty can be understood by the fact that holding on to old customers leads to low costs in account management. Acquiring new customers is six to seven times more expensive than making the existing ones happy. Verbal referrals of old customers serve as free advertising for the business. Word of mouth endorsements are lapped up more easily than those coming from print or other marketing resources.

They build a trust on the services, so established customers will more likely be open to recommendations of new or obscure products. Existing consumers will not resist or be turned away from inflation in prices and neither will price slashing to beat competition lead to loss in profits because the old buyers cushion that drop by keeping the sales flow steady.  Loyal customers will show their faith in the enterprise by not only giving positive feedback and input but also through negative critique. This is because they would want the business to thrive and it’s important to them to play a role in its betterment. As result of the overall suggestions, the quality output could be improved in areas which could be off putting to new customers that prefer not voicing their shopping experience to not visiting again.

The web seemed to make Customer loyalty insignificant since people could find the lowest possible price option at the click of a button and disappear. However a loyal number of shoppers have emerged that seek out particular websites and revisit again by employing browsing tools such as bookmarks. The e- market is ripe for the picking if a few measures are employed to ensure the loyalty of buyers that are comfortable buying from one known online service than perusing many unknown and unreliable ones. To generate repeat sales, a fair price is important. Moreover convenient methods of shipping and payment, if offered will be appreciated and noted by the buyers and will ascertain the return of a user even if the price is not lower than that of its competitor. Offering loyalty programs and incentives to long-time or repetitive users/buyers can also establish faithful buyers.

Relationship marketing involves prompt customer interaction. An online help resource to enable a sale or address a query will work wonders with buyers who are not tech savvy. The service must overall meet the expectations of the e- customer. From the look of the website to the smooth navigating of the pages, from the ease of order form to the versatile options being offered for either payment or delivery, all must make sense to the buyer. Convenience should be the key in site planning. If it’s done successfully then loyalty can be achieved even in the commercial webosphere. In short, customer loyalty is established by treating people the way they would prefer to be treated.