The customer always comes first, and most of the leading industries swear by this tip. And the key point, to bring this change, is one happy customer at a time. According to a recent Forbes article, the single best thing to ensure loyalty from the customer, is to engage them one-on-one, such that they’re treated as people who buy commodities, rather than the mere end of the demand chain.
Only a few businesses realize the value of customer engagement. And amongst those who do, not all really commit to building loyalty and engagement, customer by customer. At its root, creating loyal customers is about taking the time to learn about your customers individually and then using simple systems to turn that knowledge into enduring business relationships.
In doing so, you turn your offering into much more than a commodity – you turn it into a personal relationship. Social media is a big player for customer engagement. An article in The Times of India stated that people spend up to 70% of their time on social media. For the information provided on these media handles as valid and trusted. This is mostly because on an all-inclusive platform, the falsified portion gets filtered out.
As times are changing, people look to those businesses which provide them a personal and curated service. It is no longer only about generating a high number of likes from bots. To engage a potential audience, one mustn’t only bank on an inorganic outreach. But rather, focus on the people who actually consume. The primary threat to businesses everywhere, is all their commodities are substitute goods, i.e. what you offer can be easily interchanged or replaced. No matter how invincible your business’s advantages are, in the long run your business model can spiral downwards, if you don’t engage your potential customers. Even if it is privileged in technology, geography, or branding. What’s to fear, is that in this era of accelerating change, it is likely to happen sooner than you think.
