Studies reveal it is more costly to win new customers than to keep them. Believe it or not, it takes a lot of energy to retain them! How do you ensure their loyalty remains with your company?

Strategize your loyalty. Plan ahead, plan it well. If your goal is to keep 80 percent of your present customer base and launch a strategy that improves it to 90 percent, your business achieves 10 percent growth. Start looking at your present business plan and find ways to enhance customer retention. Some effective marketing tactics are product differentiation and multiple product offerings for the same customer. More importantly, come up with great marketing activities for the current customers.

Use customer complaints. You may not know exactly what is wrong until you hear the actual feedback. Customers with complaints conveyed through e-mail or phone are good because they can guide your business to check at those areas that need improvement. The truth of the matter is – when customers are not happy, they will not complain to you directly. They will tell everyone else they know and they bring their business to your competition. Which is why there is a growing trend in finding approaches to listen to the voice of the customer through quick surveys and after sales calls.

Loyalty begins at home. Customer loyalty is a whole lot easier if you start from within – in the environment where your employees thrive in. While our business puts a more emphasis on retaining the customer front-liners, we also need to spend a great deal of time keeping everyone happy – from sales, help desk, customer service down to accounting and billing support.

Connect with customers. Having constant communication with your customers is one good way to build customer loyalty. You can ask them to sign up for newsletters to tell them about the latest offers and free seminars or events organized by your business. You can send them holiday cards providing treats like discounts and rebates the next time they place an order. Use your in-house or outsourced customer call center to reach out to them more quickly. It may sound frivolous, but these things mean a lot to ensuring you are actively delighting them in many ways more than one.

Building loyalty is one of the most important arsenals to any business. If you continue providing efficient, value-oriented service, you will be surprised to know that these customers you have built along the way will continue coming back to make your cash registers ring.