Tips to Surprise Your Customers

10/07/2021

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What is it that makes people happy? A lot has been written on this subject already, but many experts are still on the fence. This is true for marketers as well; they have long pondered over the secret of customer happiness and haven’t found a conclusive answer as yet.

However, there are a few surefire ways to try and delight customers, which brands have been practicing for years. To start with, offering a high quality product or service is an absolute must. Failing to do so will mean not only a loss for your business, but a gain for your competitors.

Secondly, all your customers and prospects must have a great experience interacting with your brand and using your products and services. This will help convert prospects into customers, and existing customers into loyal brand advocates.

So, achieving customer loyalty for your business should be a top priority. But it doesn’t happen overnight. Building loyalty comes from constantly letting your customers know that you appreciate and value their continued support. You need to exceed their expectations by surprising them with regular acknowledgements and rewards. This will strengthen the customer-brand relationship, and increase chances of growing your business.

Here are some tips on how to do this:

1. Listen to Your Customers

Listen to your customers, respond to their needs, and meet and exceed their expectations. When someone has an unpleasant experience, they are likely to share their feedback, which you may find disturbing. But, never make the mistake of ignoring negative feedback as you will lose out on the opportunity to fix something that isn’t working well.

By listening to your customers, you gain an opportunity to learn more about them which makes it easy for you to sell and market to them. Your customers are your biggest assets. By listening to them, and taking their negative feedback constructively, you can build stronger customer-seller relationships. Listening to your customers assures them that they can reach out to you if things go wrong, and this helps change their perception of your brand from negative to positive. It also increases their comfort and trust in you. So, make sure you listen carefully and actively to critical reviews, and take the necessary, corrective steps.

2. Personalize Product Content

Personalization is the next level of customer engagement. As mentioned above, if you listen to your customer’s needs you will know exactly what and how to sell them in a way that reflects their personal tastes and preferences. There are many ways of personalizing content, some of them are:

Creating and sharing seasonal content including wishes on special days or celebratory occasions.
Sending personalized emails with product recommendations

4. Customer Support

It is very important to provide valuable and swift customer service to keep customers happy. This also builds customer loyalty. It's a smart idea to add a live chat on your website to respond in real time to customer queries. You may also want to encourage customers to communicate with you by email or phone. Providing multiple, flexible customer service options make it easier for customers to connect in a manner convenient to them. Customer support is an on-going process and sellers need to make sure that they are consistent and always available.

Customers tend to stop purchasing from sellers who do not offer good customer support. A customer who is vocal about their negative customer experience can lead to other potential customers avoiding your brand. A pleased and happy customer, on the other hand, would make repeat purchases and get referrals.

5. Customized Offers

The more you know about your customers, the better you can customize your approach to them.

When you have a customer's buying history, you can decide what kind of offer would be most relevant for each individual. This will go a long way towards improving brand loyalty. Providing exclusive discounts or added value for products/services will help turn customer curiosity into real purchase.

For example, Amazon stays one step ahead of the customer, knowing what products they need and what they want to purchase next. Every time a customer visits their website, they are shown a customized homepage based on specific variables such as past shopping preferences, wish list, and real-time shopping cart data to help them discover new items.

6. Exclusive Events

Events are a great way to engage your current and prospect customers. It not only gives you the opportunity to network and build a great brand image, but it also helps in building relations with customers and your business associates and partners. For instance, events on special occasions such as Mothers’ Day, Women's Day, Valentine’s Day, you can plan your products for greater outreach and impact. Similarly, time-bound sales, such as “Midnight Sale” or “Monsoon Mania” can also bring you greater selling opportunities and provide greater market exposure. Amazon Prime Day is also a great example of event-specific sales, wherein Amazon rewards loyal customers.

7. Customer Shout-Out on Social Media

Thanking or openly acknowledging a customer on a social networking platform is a perfect way to show your customers that you care for them. So, go ahead and publicly acknowledge, tag, or tweet at your customers as a way to express your gratitude. Just remember to take customers’ consent before making their name public.

Many people enjoy being noticed online, so they are sure to share your post or retweet it on their networks, generating instant word-of-mouth publicity. Daily use of this strategy is a great way to reassure existing and potential clients that the people behind the e-commerce store are actually caring human beings.

8. Referral Programs

Word-of-mouth recommendations, from one customer to another, is arguably the best way to convince a prospect to become a customer. Referrals can provide a significant boost to your sales. People are likely to consider third-party feedback more credible than any paid promotional campaign. If this feedback comes from someone they know personally, then it becomes even more impactful. So why not reward this behavior?

A referral program is a great way to reward customers for referring new clients, while thanking them for their purchases. Rewards work as an incentive that encourages customers to share your brand with others. Special discounts or gift cards can be given to the clients who refer your store details with their friends and family. You can also give rewards in the form of cashbacks, store credits, and other offers.

9. Free Samples

Providing a gift or a sample with a customer’s order is a perfect way to reward customers for their business. Providing something extra is a great way to delight them and improve their buying experience. Free samples also help sellers to creatively display a commodity that the customer has never experienced before. By promoting product discovery, you inspire customers to come back and shop again.

10. Product Testing Programs

Any customer would love to be part of something exclusive. Sending new products for testing to a loyal set of customers on a monthly or quarterly basis is a great way to create brand loyalty and keep customers happy. Doing so makes customers feel engaged with the brand and creates the sense that they are stakeholders who are involved in the brands decision-making. Moreover, their feedback may prove invaluable to you during the testing or prototyping phase of your product.

Conclusion

It is a well-known fact that it costs far more to attract a new customer than to maintain a current one. As there are several competitors in the market, it is important to keep your customer base happy and engaged. There are many ways to surprise and reward your customers. Even something as small as a meaningful, heartfelt, unique ‘thank you’ note will always go a long way towards building successful customer relations and encouraging long-term loyalty.

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