By Julia HydeRemember trading stamps? If you’re over 40, chances are you will. Every time you shopped at a participating grocery store or gas station they gave you stamps to paste into a book. When you’d accumulated enough stamps, you could cash them in for “free” gifts.
These stamps were one of first loyalty programs. They kept customers loyal to a particular product or merchant because they offered an incentive that encouraged customer to keep coming back – and spend more money.
While trading stamps are a thing of past, a wide range of industries still use loyalty programs to establish long-term relationships with their customers. By far most successful and well known is frequent flyer program.
On surface, frequent flyer programs appear to be all about rewarding customers with free flights just because they choose to fly with a particular airline – more miles you fly more free miles you get. But, if you asked airlines who really benefits from these programs, chances are you’d hear a resounding, “We do.” Ask them to explain, and they’ll likely tell you that frequent flyer programs allow them to collect data on individual customers, help them tailor their mailings and special offers to customer’s specific needs, allow them to promote higher fares, and ultimately increase their sales.
But, as popular as frequent flyer programs have become they only work if service offered by airline is good enough to earn customer’s trust. And that means not only offering a quality flying experience but great customer service and on-going communication.
For smaller businesses, benefits of establishing a loyalty program are no different to those enjoyed by major airlines. And equally, program’s success depends on first establishing three most important elements of building that loyalty:
1. Treat your customer’s right, and they’ll be yours for life.
Your customers will not only judge your company by quality of your product, but also by level of service you offer. Offer one without other and you may as well give up now.
Great customer service includes, among other things:
Credibility: Your customers should be able to trust you. No one wants to be on alert for small print or hidden charges. They want to know that your company can be trusted and has their best interests at heart.
Flexibility: Never use words, “I’m sorry but it’s not our policy.” Always solve your customer’s problems, even if it means losing sale. There’s nothing worse for a customer than a company that will not go out of their way to accommodate their needs.
On-time Deliveries: If you’ve ever ordered a product and been told that delivery time is 6-8 weeks, you’ll understand frustration a customer experiences. Unless product is out of stock, or is an international delivery, there’s no earthly reason why a product should take 6-8 weeks to deliver. Similarly, if you promise a certain delivery time, you must abide by it. If you say product will be shipped within 72 hours, then ship it within 72 hours. If for some reason you find you can’t meet delivery time, notify customer and give them option to cancel their order.