Small effort, big impact steps to create lasting customer loyalty.
Building brand loyalty requires dedicated effort and relying solely on marketing your service or product is not enough. But what does it mean for a customer to be “loyal” to your brand? Brand loyalty is defined as a tendency of consumers to continue buying the same brand of services/products over other competitors.
For companies in healthcare, telecommunications, finance, and utilities, customers have opportunities to show their loyalty both by expanding their engagement with your products/services and by consistently choosing your brand over your competitors. This encompasses brand loyalty.
Not only is brand loyalty becoming a greater priority for brands, but customers are more likely to describe themselves as “loyal” to a brand. A 2019 Yotpo survey of more than 2,000 customers revealed that almost 9 out of 10 were loyal to brands. This marked a 27.9% increase from the previous year, potentially driven by increased efforts by brands in building strong relationships with their customers.
Customer experience automation—or the technology that helps customers with simple tasks and communications—is an easy, yet powerful way to improve customer interactions and foster brand loyalty.
The Influence of Customer Experience Automation
Automating customer experience boosts efficiency for your teams and collects useful data to help you make smarter business decisions. Here are 12 key automation tactics that influence how your company retains, engages, and attracts customers:
1. Implement company listening
Listening and understanding customer needs will deepen brand loyalty, so long as you’re acting on those needs. Customer service representatives and customer care teams are the best listeners on the team; however, automation solutions can help them understand customers and make changes more efficiently. Tools like SkyCreek Surveys enable customer care teams to make listening an automated task.
2. Know contact preferences
Knowing and following customer contact preferences is an easy and effective way to showcase superior customer service. Brand loyalty is reinforced through contact preferences by meeting customers where they are and in the way they choose. Choose a solution that can handle multichannel communications for each customer’s preferred method.
3. Review feedback
If 80% of customers gradually become loyal to a brand over time, it means that reviewing and analyzing customer feedback also has to be an ongoing effort. Don't evaluate single customer experiences in isolation. Always consider feedback in the broader context of their whole journey with your brand.
4. Improve ease of use
One of the main selling points of automation is ease of use. Automation makes life easier—both for your employees and your customers—especially when it comes to an automated appointment reminder/confirmation system, service updates, and other need-to-know information that can be delivered quickly and conveniently.
5. Identify leads
Allowing a potential lead to slip away can be frustrating for the sales team. However, with the use of customer experience automation tools, the initial engagement and tracking of that lead can be taken care of. This gives the sales team the time to focus, conduct detailed research, and then pursue the lead with a tailored approach.
6. Measure responses
Real-time results—not just feedback—can do wonders for your customer engagement strategy. The right automation tool gives you access to how interactions are being perceived by your customers and allows you to make quick adjustments to your strategy for improved results.
7. Personalize experiences
Building brand loyalty isn't just about serving your customers. It's also about consistently representing your brand in every communication and interaction. Select an automation tool that lets you personalize experiences for both your customers and the unique way your organization markets itself.
8. Outdo competitors
By implementing customer experience automation solutions that simplify processes for customers and employees, your organization can gain a competitive edge. Continue to prove to your customers that they are in the best hands and prolong their brand loyalty for years to come.
9. Support employees
As customer satisfaction demands grow, the pressure on employees to retain, engage, and attract customers is staggering. With customer experience automation, redundant tasks are handled by technology, freeing up your employees to focus on more ROI-driven efforts.
10. Speed up support
There’s nothing worse for a customer than waiting when tensions are high and service is subpar. In fact, 90% of customers rate getting a response within 30 minutes as important or very important when they have support questions. Automation can quickly place them in line and might even address some issues before they reach customer support.
11. Adopt proactivity
At SkyCreek, our philosophy is that customers should be contacted at the right time, using the right channel, with the right message. For industries with complex customer service needs, the “right time” can be difficult to pinpoint. But being proactive with an automated appointment reminder/confirmation system, or text marketing campaigns create incredible value for companies to alleviate errors and engage customers before questions arise.
12. Understand the customer journey
Customer experience automation allows you to see the path customers take to receive and use your service/product and the challenges they face along the way. With a holistic approach to automating their experiences, brands nurture loyalty to ensure customers take the most seamless path possible.
Ways to Implement Customer Experience Automation
Customer service technology achieves a great deal for organizations today, especially for healthcare, telecommunications, finance, and utility companies. From a simple automated appointment confirmation system to complex surveys, automation can help your teams improve efficiency, empower changes, and generate results.
When it comes to choosing the right solution for your organization, don’t just focus on the automation features, but also on whether it will sufficiently meet the unique needs of your customer base. These solutions can include:
- Appointment reminder systems
- Appointment confirmation systems
- Text marketing campaigns
- Follow-up surveys
- Outbound calls and messages
- Self-checkout
- Website chatbots
- Phone routing
- Ticket/case prioritization
- Email marketing
Case Study
Washington Gas, a sizable public utilities company, needed to meet high customer expectations while gaining operational efficiencies. Automation was a way to do this, so they began searching for a provider that could help their customers change their perception of utility companies.
By partnering with SkyCreek, Washington Gas was able to implement an automated appointment confirmation system, an appointment reminder system, and post-appointment surveys. These automation solutions from SkyCreek met Washington Gas’ standards and more, achieving:
- Reduced technicians’ “cannot gain access” (CGA) rates, a savings of $100-$150 per occurrence
- Increased customer satisfaction with appointment scheduling process
- Improved operational efficiency among technicians and their work orders
- Immediate addressing of negative experiences
- Deeper understanding of technician performance
Most importantly, Washington Gas made a dedicated effort to address brand loyalty. A brief, automated customer survey delivered via telephone, email, or SMS contained questions that focused on two proven customer experience metrics: Customer Effort Score (CES) and Overall Customer Satisfaction (CSAT).
Read more about this success story here.
To set up your own automation strategy that builds brand loyalty, schedule a consultation with SkyCreek here.
