How to obtain customer loyalty on the Internet

Many people believe that the emergence of the Internet has changed the traditional business rules. However, the cultivation of customer loyalty is not outdated, but more urgent. This is because, on the one hand, it is easier for customers to betray companies that are not satisfied. By using the Internet, you only need to use a little mouse to abandon the old manufacturer and look for another partner; on the other hand, when the Internet connects the world, the choice of customers is greatly increased.
In the traditional business field, customer loyalty is a matter of great importance to many enterprises, because long-term customers can create more value for enterprises. Once a customer understands, gets used to, and trusts a certain product or service, his/her purchase of this product or service will increase substantially, and the enterprise will receive more and more benefits. Then, satisfied and loyal customers can bring more new customers to the company. Customers who are satisfied or loyal to their products or services play a positive role in the "word-of-mouth effect. They will make free advertising campaigns for enterprises and introduce new customers to them. This not only saves enterprises a lot of cost to attract new customers, but also brings new profit streams. One study found that every 5% increase in the customer retention rate will increase the company's profits by 25% to 95%.
In the Internet era, customer loyalty is also crucial. As reichheld and Schefter have discovered in their studies, the effect of "first loss, then profit" of customer loyalty in traditional businesses is more obvious on the Internet: In the early stages of establishing relationships with customers, e-commerce enterprises get a new customer to pay much higher fees than traditional businesses. For example, for clothing sellers that only conduct online business, the cost of attracting new customers is 20% to 40% higher than that of traditional clothing sellers. This means that, in the early days of establishing a relationship between an enterprise and its customers, the company has invested more, and at the same time, it has opened up more space for the enterprise's development. The reason is:
On the one hand, the construction of virtual stores is easier than the construction of a real-world store. Therefore, on the internet, enterprises can more easily expand their products, this means that it is easier for an enterprise to sell more goods to the same customer, and the relationship between the enterprise and the customer is broadened. At the same time, you can use databases for customer relationship management to achieve transaction intelligence and personalization based on customer needs and preferences. In this way, the relationship between enterprises and customers becomes closer. In these two aspects, repeated purchases by customers will increase much more than repeated purchases in traditional businesses, which is more common in "BtoB. For example, Grainger in the United States found that its sales of old online customers are three times the sales of similar customers in traditional channels.
On the other hand, information on the internet is faster, more convenient, and more widely spread. Therefore, the "mouth-to-mouth" effect is more obvious on the Internet. In fact, many enterprises have realized that, for example, many web pages now have the "recommended to your friends and family" option, which completes the recommendation process by clicking the mouse. Word of mouth (wordofmouth) is changed to word of mouse (wordofmouse ). The dissemination and promotion of such information can be carried out through a variety of tools, such as email, chat rooms, BBS, and forums. A piece of information published in the electronic community can be seen by thousands of people. The influence of information dissemination is very large. In addition, new customers who are recommended tend to seek help and technical support from their recommenders, who actually act as free advertising and service personnel for the company. For example, eBay's cost for new customers is quite low, mainly because of this.

How to obtain customer loyalty on the Internet?

Compared with traditional business, the principle of creating customer loyalty in the Network Age is the same. To gain customer loyalty, we must first try to make the customer satisfied. Differentiate your target customers, identify their needs and preferences, and use high-quality products or services to meet their needs. Due to the special nature of the network, enterprises that use e-commerce for business should also pay attention to the following points:
1. Trust customers. Trust is a prerequisite for generating loyalty to customers. The word "trust" is particularly important on the Internet. Because of the virtual nature of the network, customers and enterprises can make transactions when they are "invisible" to each other, and the customer bears great risks. Therefore, customers tend to maintain long-term relationships with the companies they trust. In fact, when many customers choose and evaluate online businesses, the most important factor is "trustworthy", rather than "low price" or "wide variety of products ". Trust comes from many aspects, such as high quality and reasonable price of products or services.
On the Internet, the most important factors are:
① Protect customers' online security. Online customers are most worried about the leakage or theft of their credit card accounts and passwords. Some enterprises need to invest enough power to ensure the security of online payment. For example, Amazon customers believe that this online bookstore is trustworthy and reassuring. They are willing to store their names, addresses, credit card numbers, and other information in Amazon's ordering system, this is one of the main reasons for their long-term relationship with Amazon. Furthermore, customers are concerned about their personal privacy and security. Some websites disclose the customer's identity and address to a third party without the customer's consent, or track the customer's online behavior. These actions will lead to resentment and protest from customers. Therefore, enterprises should pay attention to protecting customers' privacy.
② Perform the contract in a timely and accurate manner. For online merchants, delivery of physical goods or fulfillment of service contracts is an important issue. Anyone can build a website and get an order. However, it is not easy to deliver the goods specified by the customer to the designated place in a timely manner. This requires enterprises to combine their online businesses with offline logistics and service systems. In this regard, some traditional large enterprises have strong capabilities. For example, Toyota claims that it can deliver custom cars within a week. For general enterprises, it is too difficult to build a distribution and service system. Therefore, it is a good choice to form an alliance with professional distribution enterprises.
③ Prevent fraud in transactions. This is important to many intermediary enterprises, such as auction websites. When a stranger makes a transaction, the credit of the other party is a matter of great concern. Enterprises must ensure that transactions are fair and reliable. For example, eBay has established a perfect credit rating system. After each transaction is completed, the seller and the buyer should evaluate the other party and publish the rating results on the website. At the same time, eBay also guarantees each transaction to prevent the buyer or seller from being cheated by the other party. In this way, the transaction behavior of members can be effectively monitored, and the transaction is guaranteed, and the customer will naturally go back.
2. Target customers. The Internet has opened up an extremely broad market. Therefore, many enterprises tend to focus only on how to obtain as many customers as possible when carrying out e-commerce activities, ignoring a basic fact: carefully selecting and serving specific customers is the foundation for the success of an enterprise. Otherwise attracting various customers will only harm the interests of the enterprise. As mentioned above, the cost for online enterprises to attract new customers is higher than that for traditional enterprises. to reduce these costs, the relationship between online enterprises and customers is maintained for two to three years on average, before that, a considerable number of customers have switched to other companies. Therefore, enterprises must carefully select their target customers, provide products or services that meet their specific needs, and try their best to reduce the customer turnover rate. For example, Vanguard, the fastest-growing mutual fund company in the United States in the last decade, has been focusing on its target customers for many years-investors who prefer low-cost and low-volatility index fund investments. This is also true when developing e-commerce. Its website covers the form and content to meet the needs of target customers. On the internet, it provides various information, suggestions, and help related to fund investment to customers, and educate these customers without providing services to speculators in securities transactions. It makes unremitting efforts to make it not only have a large number of loyal customers, but also has a great cost advantage over other companies.
To a large extent, the Internet is just a tool, not a strategy. Its unique advantages allow enterprises to strengthen communication with customers, better understand customer needs, increase response sensitivity, reduce customer transaction costs, and bring greater convenience to customers. Customer loyalty is not achieved by technology. It requires enterprises to provide consistent and excellent customer experience. This is the most difficult.