How automation saves time and secures loyal customers

We’ve all been there. There are a million and one things mounting on your to-do list and no end in sight. There’s stock to be managed, marketing campaigns to launch and customers to respond to. Before you know it, you find yourself muttering  “where has all my time gone?”.

When you’re a busy store owner with ambitious acquisition goals, often the time spent on what’s important is sacrificed for what’s urgent and certain priorities start to slip. Alarmingly, one of these priorities could be your existing customers.

But be warned: neglecting your existing customers is highly damaging. It costs five times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain one and it’s often these existing customers who generate the most profit. They already know and trust your brand as they’ve purchased from you before, meaning they’re more likely to come back. In fact, once a customer joins your loyalty program and uses a reward, the chance of them purchasing again jumps to 68%. So don’t let these valuable customers feel ignored.

But when you’ve got too many tasks to complete, how can you focus on making these customers your top priority? Automation could be your answer.

In this blog, we explore three areas of your business that you could automate so you can spend more of your treasured time on what matters most.

1. Your help desk

Providing support for your customers is now vital. With the rise of person-to-brand channels, such as on-site chatbots and social media, customers expect their queries to be answered instantly. But, according to research, the average response time for many companies is 12 hours and ten minutes. Why? Because the time needed to respond to these queries is absorbed by other tasks. By turning to automated help desks to answer your customer queries you can save time and respond to your customers efficiently without neglecting the personal touch.

These tools categorise user queries into themes so you can decide on the best way to address them. And, when an individual files a complaint, they display the whole customer’s history so you can address their problem in a more informed way without wasting time digging into the data.

By taking all the leg-work out of organising customer queries, you can use your help desks responses as a way to secure long-term loyalty. You could tie up your apology with action and move them up a loyalty tier so they know you care about their custom. This way, you’ll earn your customers trust and they’ll be more likely to return to your store sooner.

2. Post-purchase emails

Post-purchase emails offer a great opportunity to thank your customers for their latest purchase. They also allow you to present incentives to attract these shoppers back to your site. But, just like everything else, these emails can easily go amiss when your team is focussing all their energy on securing new customers.

By automating these emails you can easily save time while showing your customers that you care. With LoyaltyLion, you can use member data to send out personalised emails easily. Maybe you’ve noticed that your customer’s first purchase was from a specific product range? Send them an email that shows them discounts on products in the same collection. Or, maybe, they have loyalty points that they earned from their first purchase but never claimed. Give them a little nudge to return and redeem their points sooner. For example, Dr. Axe alerts customers when they have rewards to be claimed, and they suggest a particular product to redeem these rewards on.

Take this automation a step further by segmenting your customers based on the loyalty behaviour they exhibit. This way you can see which customers are already loyal, at-risk or in need of winning back so you can target them with the right email content.

3. Workflows

Today, store owners have the power to experiment with triggers and actions thanks to a variety of tools on the market. This takes the time needed to test the best strategies off your hands so you can focus on optimising what you know works.

With LoyaltyLion insights, you can segment your customers based on their loyalty behaviour. You can understand which of your customers are loyal (and therefore valuable) and which ones are at risk of churning. This takes out any guesswork so you can target and engage each customer the right way.

Maybe your loyal customers respond best to exclusive events. Trigger a one-click action that moves this segment up a tier so they can engage with exclusive offers. Or maybe your at-risk customers respond best to timely, double-point events. Trigger a two-day loyalty point extravaganza that grabs their attention. When you give your customer a personalised experience, your showing that you value their wants and needs. And, when they feel like you care about them on a personal level, your customers will reward you with their long-term loyalty.

So there we have it. Three mammoth tasks that you could be crossing off your to-do list right away. All in all, automation isn’t something to be afraid of. If used right, it will give you the time, and headspace, to focus on what matters most – cherishing your existing customers.

About LoyaltyLion

LoyaltyLion is a data-driven loyalty and engagement platform trusted by thousands of ecommerce brands worldwide. Merchants use LoyaltyLion when they want a fully customised loyalty program that is proven to increase customer engagement, retention and spend. Stores using LoyaltyLion typically generate at least $15 for every $1 they spend on the platform.