How do you measure customer loyalty? This year, customer loyalty will be one of the important metrics for businesses to measure. With the economy showing signals of contraction, retaining and growing deeper relationships with the customers you already have will be vital.
But how do you track it? And if you’re seeing concerning signals, what do you do when customers are likely to churn?
In this blog post, we’ll be exploring different tips and tricks on how to measure customer loyalty, and execute great retention strategies when customers are showing signals that they might consider other options.
Measuring your customers’ satisfaction
The first step in measuring customer loyalty is understanding your customers’ satisfaction levels. Are you in fact talking to your customers enough? Do you know where they stand
These conversations can be done through surveys or polls that ask customers questions about their experiences with your business. Utilizing tools like Net Promoter Score (NPS) will help you quickly get an idea of how happy or unhappy your customers are with your product or service, allowing you to triage customer requests, and proactively start tackling them. When considering the best ways to keep your loyalty metrics easily tracked and measurable, consider the following measurements.
Net Promoter Score (NPS) - NPS is one of the most popular customer loyalty metrics used today. It provides a score from -100 to 100 that helps businesses gain an understanding of customer sentiment about their products and services. To get an NPS score, businesses typically ask their customers questions such as “How likely are you to recommend our product/service to a friend or colleague?” The answers are then grouped into three categories: promoters (9-10), passives (7-8), and detractors (0-6). Businesses can then use this data to identify areas where they need to improve or increase customer loyalty. NPS is a critical metric baseline for your business, and should be collected on a routine basis.
Customer Retention Rate (CRR) - Another important metric for measuring customer loyalty is the Customer Retention Rate (CRR). This metric measures how many existing customers continue to purchase from your business over time. A higher CRR indicates that customers are satisfied with your products/services and are more likely to remain loyal in the future. This metric can be measured with a mix of quantitative and qualitative data - such as reviewing quantitative data like purchasing information mixed with qualitative information like customer testimonials, survey responses and more.
Online Reviews and Testimonials - Online reviews are also an effective way to measure customer loyalty. When potential customers research a business online, they often read through reviews left by previous customers before making a decision whether or not to purchase from them. It is super important to ask your customers to leave reviews or share testimonials with you, so future customers can hear about your value first hand. Surveys that let you collect voice and video data from your customers for testimonials are the perfect way to easily capture this information. Alternatively, you can also ask your customers to leave a review on your public facing review pages.
Monitoring customer behavior
To really understand why customers are loyal, you need to monitor their behavior. Are they using all the features of your products? Are they engaging with your emails? Are they taking advantage of special offers? Are they referring you to others? All these behaviors can give insight into what makes them loyal, as well as what drives them away. To monitor behavior, use analytics software that allows you to see how users interact with each part of your website or app. Data is your friend in all of these examples, so ensure you are monitoring actively for engagement, usage and advocate information. If you are seeing any signs that a customer might be slowing engagement, reach out to them. Your best data point will be hearing your customers, and understanding what might not be working, how their goals are evolving, or how they are viewing your business in relation to other market options.
A consideration when looking to scale how you chat with customers can be leveraging surveys that use multimedia components. Did you know that you can now add survey capabilities like asking questions with voice (to build a more personal connection with your audience), giving respondents the option to respond with voice (to improve how you collect qualitative data), and asking questions with video (to further improve survey interactivity and showcase a wider range of content). Surveys are a leading way to pulse check your customers, so consider a survey that gives your audience as much choice as possible in how they share how they are feeling with you.
Rewards and retention strategies
When evaluating the stickiness your business has with customers. A vital strategy to ensure customer retention is your rewards and retention plans. Ensure you are offering some sort of reward for loyal customers such as discounts or free shipping on purchases. You can also create retention plans where customers receive special offers after they have purchased a certain number of items from your company or have stayed with your business for a certain period of time. The goal here is to make sure that all customers feel appreciated and valued by your business — this helps build loyalty over time! The more personal your connection to customers are, the more likely they will be able to continuously and frequently share how they are finding your services, and help you catch opportunities to improve experiences and keep them coming back.
Launching your next program to monitor customer loyalty? Try voice and video surveys to take your customer survey to the next level.
Monitoring customer loyalty means consistently tracking loyalty data. This means sending frequent pulse checks to customers that measure both quantitative and qualitative information. When looking for a survey tool to capture this information, consider Voiceform, which offers both quantitative question types like NPS and qualitative capabilities that let the voice of your customer shine. With Voiceform, unlock multimedia capabilities that dramatically improve response rates and the quality of your feedback. With robust question options, capture the hard data that shows you customer loyalty over time, as well as soft data that lets you empathize with customers and hear their authentic thoughts.
