Online consumption is at an all-time high in 2020. Businesses and brands have enjoyed high viewership and online engagement from internet users who have turned to online means of reaching out to businesses. Whether it's for their necessities or luxuries, customers have used the internet to fulfill these needs.
On the other hand, the higher consumption rate and increasing internet know-how for potential customers have also meant stiffer competition between brands. Businesses without an online presence have needed to learn how to get online, and fast. But it's oftentimes not even enough just to be online.
Businesses often need to go to great lengths to attract new customers and even keep loyal customers. The wealth of variety and information online can lead to an overall decrease in customers' trust and loyalty.
How can businesses keep their customers' trust in this environment? One of the best tools for this task is chatbots, for their power to build conversations and relationships with customers.
What Drives Brand Loyalty?
While having a stellar product is important for brand loyalty, there are other key drivers for loyalty. Some of the biggest trends in driving loyalty include:
- Personalization - 79% percent of customers are very satisfied with loyalty programs with high personalization
- Presence - the ability of a brand to be present across multiple channels and seamlessly interact with the customer through these channels mean higher customer engagement
- Social responsibility - customers like supporting brands with a purpose that resonates with theirs
- Emotional loyalty - companies that can build an emotional connection with their audience enjoy 46% more spend than customers without emotional bonds
Investing in improving customer loyalty is key to business longevity. It may be a challenge to develop solutions in measuring loyalty but the payback is significant.
Chatbots and Brand Loyalty
Chatbots are uniquely positioned to help with this need to maintain emotional connections with customers.
While they are not replacements for human interaction, chatbots help in resolving many common issues and queries. This can be done to help maintain customer expectations on responsiveness and reliability without the need for a large support staff. Human staff can handle special, complex issues while chatbots can help in more routine tasks.
Chatbots Can Drive Personalization
A greeter chatbot on your website can help maintain a friendly demeanor for your brand, as well as obtaining the details of your potential customer and storing it for later use. A chatbot that is later on able to greet your shopper by name helps customers feel important and valued by your business.
However, make sure you don't fall prey to petty personalization that does nothing special for your customers. Reward customers when they connect with you, whether it is with promotions, updates, or a more tailored experience according to their tastes.
Chatbots Driving Presence
Businesses need to be where the customers are. With messenger and chat applications in heavy use by everyone, your business's ability to be in the applications that your customers are in is important. A customer is more likely to connect with your business if you are available where they need you to be.
Unfortunately, maintaining multiple channels can be a daunting task, which is why multi-channel chatbots can be a lifesaver. This also makes sure that when your customer interacts across multiple chat applications or your website, your business is responding to them in the same way, and they won't need to repeat themselves.
Chatbots Driving Social Responsibility
Consider making your brand's advocacies and purpose resonate through your chatbot's personality. Don't fall prey to forgetting about personality when it comes to programming your chatbot. Use your chatbot's personality to drive home your brand's image as well as your vision and mission.
Consider these two chatbot messages:
Thank you for purchasing! Please check your email for your order confirmation.
versus
Hooray! You've saved up to 5 trees by purchasing our recycled paper.
We'll send you an order confirmation soon, so check your email!
The latter drives home the fact that your shopper has just helped make the environment just a little bit better by purchasing from your business.
Chatbots Driving Emotional Loyalty
Lastly, a chatbot with a personality that speaks to your brand's values will help customers connect better with your business. This depends heavily on your brand's identity as well as your target market's expectations, so make sure you check your buyer personas when building your chatbot's personality.
Sentiment analysis is important when it comes to chatbots. When this is a challenge for some AI engines, the ability to quickly flag a conversation to handoff to a human customer care personnel is important.
Consider using keyword and phrase triggers to determine when a customer needs to be handed over to a human being. An effective transition helps in keeping customers happy without sacrificing responsiveness for your overall brand.
Putting it All Together
An effective loyalty program for any business does not stop at just reward points and mailing list updates.
Being available and responsive to your customers is an important part of your whole program. This boost in customer experience can be very favorable to any business, regardless of the industry.