Here at Leapfrogg, we have a panel of more than 900 premium retail consumers that we engage with on a regular basis to help us understand customer needs and expectations from the brands and retailers they buy from.
Every month, we question them on a range of areas from buying behaviours and brand opinion, to emotional purchase triggers and their recent shopping experiences.
The Insight Edit is our weekly bite size edit of the insight we gain from our panel in our search to truly understand the mind of the premium customer.
This week we are focussing on the ways retailers make their customers feel valued. Feeling valued by a brand or retailer is a large factor in a consumer’s decision to remain loyal and we wanted to find out what factors contribute to that.
We asked our panel to think of the brands they feel value them as a customer and then asked them to think about why that was.
As you might expect customer service was the top response with 72.29% of respondents selecting it.
Ensuring you offer exceptional customer service is the best way to make your customers feel valued. It is therefore key you invest in this area within your business across internal processes, staff training, delivery methods and response times.
Next in importance is the way you communicate with your customers (54.2%). Understanding who your customers are and therefore the way in which they would like to be communicated with is important to not only make the first sale but to create customer loyalty and encourage repeat purchases. Interestingly men found this to be of far more importance than women with 70% of men and only 48.3% of women selecting it as a factor.
Offering discounts make 30% of customers feel valued. This suggests it is not always necessary to offer discounts to your loyal customers. If you offer a great customer service and communicate and engage your customers effectively then you can charge for your products profitably.
Loyalty schemes were a close 4th place with 28.9% of respondents stating it as a factor. This perhaps suggests that many loyalty schemes don’t create the warm fuzzy feeling towards a brand that is expected. Perhaps consumers don’t appreciate the benefits on offer and see through the schemes as a device to make them spend more.
Asking your customers for their opinion is the least important factor in making them feel valued (27%). However, this is only a couple of percentage lower than the previous two factors and so should not therefore be overlooked. Asking for customers input on new product development or asking them what they want from you can often generate a wealth of useful information you can use to increase revenue and profit.
The key takeaway from this week’s Insight Edit is that the physical service your customers receive from you is the lynch-pin in making them feel valued. Ensure you offer them great service and communicate with them effectively – easy!