Consumer Loyalty in the Digital World
The Digital shopping experience — where the customer is spoilt for choice and has the shopping cart, literally, at their fingertips. Retailers vie with each other to engage the customer with various offers, discounts and rewards to capture their share of the customer loyalty pie. So it is with Food, Cab and other online aggregator services which offer “almost” free services through cashbacks, coupons and other offers for customer acquisition and retention. This cost of consumer acquisition is high and often funded through investor funds.
So is this customer really retained — actually loyal — to the retail brand that offered all those discounts? In reality, once the discounts and offers stop, the customer is out there, hunting the digital shopping grounds for other discounts and offers, which have become the norm now. The recent past has seen multiple online stores and aggregators shut down or facing severe financial pressures due to dwindling customer footfalls or rather clicks.
The quandary now is how to keep the customer coming back, while maintaining an efficient cost of customer acquisition and retention. An infallible way to acquire new customer is the discounts and offers on sign-up. This now needs to be convert into a satisfying user experience to ensure customer retention and return — and that could very well be the key towards converting short-lived customer transactions into longer and more loyal customer programs.
So lets look at the basics of customer loyalty and see how they translate into the digital world:
1. Shopping Experience: Can I find what I want, quickly and easily without having to go through multiple screens. Is there a shop assistant who can help when I need. And once I pick up what I want can I quickly, easily and securely pay for the same
2. Timeliness and Quality of Delivery: Do I get what I ordered, the correct quantity and quality and in the time or earlier than promised
3. Customer Service: A key point that is often messed, where associates answering the phone adhere to a script and flounder when something out-of-script is asked. Consumers are looking to talk to customer service associates who will listen to their complaint, give a direct answer and respond back when they say they will. A good returns policy and process, where applicable, also goes a long way to ensuring that the consumer returns for further business, instead of just a one-time transaction
4. Decent Rewards program: Reward points gained through transactions should be easy to redeem with options that the consumer would want — not necessarily options that the retailer or service provider finds easy to offer
Are these the holy grail of Customer Loyalty in the digital world — not by a long shot — but a point to start. Share your thoughts on what else needs to go in to build Loyalty
