From my personal experience automating customer review collection, I can confidently say there's no greater feeling than having loyal customers who not only keep coming back but also spread the word about your business to everyone they know. It's a testament to the quality of your products or services and the exceptional customer experience you provide.
Cultivating such deep customer loyalty is no easy task; it often requires years of consistent effort and nurturing. But what if I told you there's a way to accelerate the process of building a loyal customer base?
That's where automation comes in. By incorporating automation into every customer touchpoint, you can create a seamless and personalized experience that keeps your customers engaged and coming back for more. Imagine automating personalized emails tailored to each customer's preferences and needs or automatically sending follow-up messages and special offers to those who haven't made a purchase in a while.
By embracing automation, I've witnessed firsthand how it can transform the way businesses operate. Creating a seamless customer experience is one way to win customer loyalty, and Zapier is one of the best tools to help you do so.
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What is customer loyalty, and why should you care?
Zapier offers many benefits, one of which is improving the customer experience so you end up with happy customers. Happy customers often turn into loyal customers. But what is customer loyalty, and why should you care about it?
Customer loyalty refers to the emotional attachment and commitment customers have to a brand. Loyal customers will make repeat purchases, advocate for your brand and even defend your brand against competitor brands.
The majority of loyal customers will choose your product over cheaper alternatives. And what's particularly interesting, according to a Harvard Business Review study, is that the key to happy customers is, of course, happy employees.
Now let's get right to the point: What is the key to happy employees? According to a TestBox study, 90% of customer support professionals say that the software they use measurably affects their satisfaction with their jobs.
Customer loyalty is directly correlated with the software customer support teams use and how they use it.
Keep in mind in order to build loyal customers, you need to retain your existing customers over a period of time as you delight and impress them. Focusing on retaining current customers helps you build a strong base of loyal customers and significantly increase your profits. According to a Zendesk report on customer loyalty, a mere 5% increase in customer retention can boost profits by at least 25% to as much as 95%. Furthermore, Time Doctor points out that although only a small percentage of customers (12-15%) remain loyal to a single retailer, they account for a significant portion of retail sales (55-70%).
Here are five areas where you can use automation software to create a seamless customer experience that leads to more loyal customers.
Automate email communication
A unified communication approach ensures email communication from customers is automatically routed to relevant persons or departments, preventing them from getting lost and going unanswered.
Zapier integrates with most email applications, like Gmail, Outlook, ActiveCampaign, and Mailchimp. It can also integrate with apps like Google Contacts, Facebook Lead Ads, and Shopify.
That means you could do any of the following automatically:
Add prospect details from email or other communication channels to Google Contacts or another contact management database:
Add new Microsoft Outlook contacts to Google Contacts
Pull leads from Facebook Lead Ads and other social media channels and send prospecting emails:
Or send welcome emails to new customers:
Discover more ways to level up your transaction email app with automation.
Automate scheduling
Relying on your memory to keep track of customer follow-ups is risky. Instead, use a scheduling app and set up a Zap to perform actions that will ensure events and tasks don't slip through the cracks—for you or your customers.
Zapier integrates with several scheduling apps, including Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook Calendar, Acuity Scheduling, and Calendly, so you can automatically remind customers of events or appointments or give yourself or your coworkers a nudge so they don't miss a meeting:
Send emails via Gmail for new scheduled Calendly events
If you use Zapier's built-in scheduling tool, you can trigger a scheduling action monthly, weekly, daily, and even hourly. This can help remind you to follow up with customers or take specific, ongoing actions to engage with customers that you might otherwise forget about.
You can also use a Zap to immediately communicate changes to events or campaigns to customers.
Send an email with Gmail when Acuity Scheduling appointments start
That way, you're assured customers will receive a change of date notice and won't arrive on the wrong day, resulting in angry customers who may never do business with you again.
Learn more about streamlining your appointment scheduling and scheduling automations to make meetings easier.
Automate email marketing
Most people use email, so including email marketing campaigns in your marketing mix is a no-brainer.
Email marketing is a very effective way to increase customer loyalty. According to SaleCycle, 59% of customers say that marketing emails influence their purchase decisions, and over 50% say they buy from marketing emails at least once a month.
Email marketing is effective because you can use it throughout the customer's journey with your company.
New customers or subscribers: send a welcome or thank you email.
Existing customers: send a follow-up email post-purchase to find out if they're satisfied with your product or sales service.
Send regular marketing or promotional communication to encourage them to buy again.
Keep in touch with e-newsletters that share the latest company news or product updates.
Send surveys or polls to elicit feedback that can help improve your service.
Undecided customers: if customers have not completed a purchase, send them an abandoned cart reminder.
Disengaged customers: send an email offering a discount or other incentive with their next purchase.
All of these can be automated when you connect an email marketing app like Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, or Drip to your other marketing tools with Zapier.
Discover more ways to automate your email marketing.
Automate customer support
Customer support greatly influences customer loyalty. Poor service is a surefire way to lose customers. Customers expect speedy responses, and many want to be able to communicate with your company through a channel of their choice.
If you use help desk software like Zendesk, Help Scout, or Intercom, you can improve the efficiency of your customer support by automatically adding customers to the appropriate mailing list, creating tickets from social media posts, and more.
Discover more ways your customers benefit from support and service automation.
Automate surveys
If you don't know what your customers are thinking, you won't know how to keep them coming back. Besides mining your customer and sales data for customer insights, you can also reach out to customers with surveys.
To manage survey feedback, you may need to allocate various tasks to different members of your team. If you use a team chat app, you can connect a tool like Slack with your survey tool to send a message whenever a new response to your survey is received.
Boost customer loyalty with automation
Zapier offers a multitude of opportunities to incorporate automation into every aspect of the customer experience. Whether it's lead generation, demo automation, or post-sales support, you have a wide range of options available. With thousands of integrations, you can tailor the automation to your specific needs.
By implementing automation, you can ensure a seamless and responsive customer experience that leaves a lasting impression. The easier it is for customers to interact with your company, the more likely they are to stay engaged and continue doing business with you. So take advantage of the power of automation through Zapier and elevate your customer experience to new heights.
This was a guest post from Dmitry Dragilev, founder of TopicRanker.com, an SEO tool which finds keywords your website can easily rank for on Google due to specific problems and weaknesses in search results. Over the last 10 years, Dmitry has helped 300+ brands rank #1 on Google through PR and SEO. Dmitry used PR & SEO to grow a startup from 0 to 40 million views per month, and got acquired by Google in 2014. After the acquisition by Google he translated his know-how into JustReachOut.io, an SEO tool to get covered in press and build authority backlinks without PR firms; it has been used by 5000+ content marketers to date and was acquired in 2021. More about all his projects on his personal blog CriminallyProlific.com.
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