6 effective strategies to improve customer loyalty

Customer loyalty is one of a company’s most valuable assets. Not only do loyal customers contribute to revenue growth, but they can also become advocates for a brand, spreading positive word of mouth that leads to even more business. Customer loyalty can elevate every KPI that a company tracks, such as customer satisfaction scores, net promoter scores, customer effort scores, and more.

However, customer loyalty is difficult to earn and even easier to lose. In fact, 49% of consumers say they’ve stopped working with a company due to one poor customer service experience.

Where should a company start to improve customer loyalty? According to 91% of customer experience (CX) professionals, contact centers are the driving force behind loyalty. This article will identify and explain six effective contact center strategies for improving customer loyalty.

What are the most effective strategies for how to increase customer loyalty?

Improving customer loyalty is essential for building lasting relationships and driving long-term success. Thoughtful engagement strategies enable businesses to create deeper connections and increase retention.

Here are six strategies to increase customer loyalty, ensuring that customers not only return but also become brand advocates:

1. Use human input to make AI more effective.

Everyone wants a human touch—and it’s no different when it comes to the customer experience. While automation and artificial intelligence (AI) have transformed efficiency, there’s nothing quite like the empathy and understanding that come from human interactions. In fact, 61% of consumers say humans understand their needs better than AI.

Human-in-the-loop AI technology enables agents with non-technical roles to help train AI models, allowing the technology to continually improve based on real data from customer interactions. Human-in-the-loop allows businesses to refine the customer experience over time, creating an optimal balance between the speed and accuracy of AI and the warmth and intuition of human interaction.

2. Help more customers help themselves.

Companies can also use generative artificial intelligence to offer customers a seamless digital self-service experience. AI-driven tools like chatbots, virtual assistants, voice bots, and automated knowledge bases give customers quick and accurate support 24/7.

Instead of speaking with a customer service representative, customers can resolve simple concerns, questions, or challenges on their own. These tools can generate responses to frequently asked questions, provide step-by-step troubleshooting, and guide customers through common issues without the need for human intervention, resulting in faster resolutions and happier customers.

However, self-service tools don’t just impact customers. They also free agents to handle more complex issues instead of losing time in repetitive, mechanical tasks. This shift allows agents to provide higher-value support, resulting in faster resolution times for complex problems and improving overall service quality. This leads to a stronger sense of trust and reliability, which in turn fosters long-term customer loyalty.

3. Improve the customer journey with data-driven insights.

Customer experience analytics provides useful insight into KPIs, allowing managers to quickly spot trends, address issues in real-time, and continuously improve the customer experience. With AI tools, managers can even analyze interactions to uncover intent and sentiment patterns, which can help them make proactive, targeted improvements to the customer journey. Analytics also provides managers with insight into agent performance, allowing them to identify coaching opportunities.

4. Route customers directly to the most qualified agent.

Regardless of which channel customers use to reach out to a brand, one thing remains constant: they want to immediately speak with an agent who is fully qualified to handle their concerns. They expect swift and effective solutions—and the key to meeting customers’ expectations lies in intelligent routing.

When customers reach out via a phone call, companies can use intelligent call routing to automatically route calls according to predefined rules. These rules can be based on factors like the customer’s issue, previous interactions, or even their location, ensuring they are quickly connected to an agent who can address their specific needs.

Not only does intelligent call routing speed up the resolution process, but it also reduces customer frustration by minimizing unnecessary transfers and hold times. By streamlining these interactions, companies can create a more efficient and satisfying experience, which can directly impact customer loyalty.

The best contact center solutions go a step further and are capable of intelligently routing digital connections to the right topic, language, or help information. Whether a customer reaches out via chat, email, or social media, advanced AI-driven systems analyze the content of the inquiry and automatically route it to the most appropriate resource.

This ensures that customers receive consistent, high-quality support across all channels, which is crucial for maintaining a seamless omnichannel experience and helps increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.

5. Let customers connect with brands across the channels they prefer.

Interacting solely through phone calls won’t cut it anymore. Customers deserve and expect convenience when communicating with brands.

Companies need to be ready to engage with customers on their terms across a variety of channels—whether it’s phone calls, SMS, social media chat, or email. An omnichannel approach gives companies accessibility, responsiveness, and the capability to deliver a seamless experience across every touchpoint.

An omnichannel strategy allows companies to avoid the potential frustration of limited communication channels.

A user-friendly omnichannel solution that allows businesses to manage these interactions from a single pane of glass is essential for streamlining operations. A unified view ensures that agents have all the relevant customer information at their fingertips, enabling quicker, accurate responses.

6. Collect customer feedback.

Too often, companies attempt to satisfy customers without actually asking those customers about their needs. Surveys give companies powerful insights into important information, such as customer needs and satisfaction levels.

Customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys can provide detailed, actionable feedback on what’s working and where improvements are needed. By directly asking customers what changes they’d like to see, companies can focus their efforts on areas that matter most to their audience rather than making assumptions.

Companies can distribute surveys using several different templates to see which generates the most insightful responses from customers. Net Promoter Score survey templates prompt the respondents to share how likely they are to recommend the company to a friend or colleague, while customer effort score templates dive into how easily customers solve their problems. On the other hand, open-ended survey questions allow customers to give more detailed feedback.

Companies must include the right questions in their surveys to solicit actionable feedback. Questions worth asking include:

• On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our company to a friend or colleague?

• What could we do to improve your likelihood of recommending us?

• How would you rate the ease of use of our product/service?

• How would you rate your satisfaction with our customer service team?

• What did you like most about your experience with us?

• If you could change one thing about our product/service, what would it be?

Regardless of how feedback is collected or which questions are asked, acting on the insights gained from these surveys is critical. When customers see that their feedback leads to tangible changes, it reinforces their trust in the brand and strengthens loyalty.

Which KPIs are most important to track for customer loyalty?

To measure customer experience in a contact center, organizations need to pay attention to key performance indicators(KPIs) to proactively identify areas for improvement, optimize customer service operations, and enhance the overall customer experience.