6 Customer Loyalty Tips: How to Encourage Customers to Share Their Shopping Experience

Assuming you just launched your online store and are trying all the advertising techniques to attract as many customers to your store as possible. While most e-tailers focus on advertising, many of them miss out the importance of offering a premium customer support and its effects in gaining credibility, retaining existing clients and converting new ones. The excitement of the first online shopping experience can be a high motivation for many.

This excitement gets customers to share this experience through their social media channels.

Since web 2.0 makes it far riskier than ever, you should work to guarantee a positive feedback once the customer completes the buying process. For the simple reason negative feedback has higher impact on consumers’ minds than positive does.

A tweet might not be the only thing you would get, if you’re lucky, your customers might even blog about the experience. Either way, customer feedback can be very effective for your branding; as word of mouse is one of the cheapest, most crucial and critical advertising methods.

While this is a rather negative example:

To overcome the barrier of customer engagement in online shopping, it should take your customers seconds to find a way to contact you; whether it’s via email, live chat, phone, or social media.

We will go through 6 customer loyalty tips which will increase the chances of finding a tweet/blog post about your business.

1. Look closely at your customer

As mentioned in a previous article, to measure the seriousness of your customer you need to look at the pages he is viewing and the time spent on the page. Your customer can’t get more serious than reaching the checkout page.

• With the help of live chat, you will be able to track your customer’s movement and know the pages he has visited, this is an informative way that will facilitate the type of conversation you will have.
• Setup targeted chat rules which will send you a message once your customers have reached a certain page.

You can at this point speak to your customer via live chat, and see if he needs help with the buying process. Make it simple; and don’t seem too desperate.

2. It’s time to call

Assuming the same customer in point 1 has completed the purchase. Wait till the merchandise reaches him, pick up the phone and check on him. As important it is to gain a new customer; it is critical to get this customer coming back. Make sure you mention your reward system for loyal customers and friend referrals; if you have one.

3. After sale in online retail

It is important to hook the customer to your brand. The best way to achieve this is through newsletters and social media. Your newsletter helps you send updates, promotions, event and venues advertisements. Your social media channels help you keep the conversation going, share the new arrivals, latest catalogues, it is also a great place to share customer testimonials.

4. Organize customer requests

At some point it will be hectic to follow up on all the emails. For this reason; it is preferred to

• Use helpdesk software to keep all your customers’ requests visible in the system.
• Add priority field in the contact form; this way it will help you answer urgent matters first.

5. Invest in your support team

As important it is to invest in your sales, marketing and R&D team, it is also crucial to educate your customer support team and keep them updated with all the changes because at the end of the day, they are the ones having direct contact with your customers. In case a client asks for an out of stock product, your customer support team must have full knowledge of your stock and offer them alternative products with similar specs.

6. Accept feedback

It is customers’ feedback (whether negative or positive) that helps develop your product and enhance your relationship. Getting feedback from your customers can always help you adopt a more user friendly technology that facilitates the shopping experience. Make product reviews and ratings visible on your store. Don’t delete negative feedback; instead, thank the customer for the feedback, apologize and try to understand the problem and resolve it as soon as possible.

Following these 6 steps can help increase the chances of finding feedback about your store on social media or blogs. This feedback will support your brand and create the buzz you’re looking for. In a nutshell, your priority must always be offering a great shopping experience, an experience worth repeating and worth talking about.