How to build (and increase) customer loyalty to drive growth

True customer loyalty isn’t easy to achieve. The market’s saturated with similar products or services, and one of those offers is likely on sale at any given time. To maintain shoppers’ engagement and loyalty, you have to think strategically. 

This article explores why gaining loyal customers is an essential way to drive growth, with five ways to build and increase your customer loyalty.

5 strong strategies to build customer loyalty 

Acquiring new customers isn’t easy. You have to capture their interest and carefully guide them through your funnel to the point of conversion. Ensuring your existing customers are satisfied enough to make another purchase? Also tricky.

But creating customer loyalty is the ultimate challenge—and dream. Loyal customers not only return to purchase from you, but also recommend you to friends and family, steer clear of your competitors, and rave about their experience on social media.

Let’s look at five ways to improve customer loyalty and drive company growth.

1. Get to know your customers even better

As with any other relationship, the company-customer connection evolves over time. That means getting to know your customers isn’t a one-and-done thing. 

Preferences, pain points, goals, and desires change as your customers enter new life stages, technology advances, and the economy changes. To build lasting relationships, you need to dig deeper into current data about who your current customers are and what matters to them. 

Collect information from several sources to paint a complete picture, including 

• Heatmaps to discover what works—and doesn’t—for the typical user. (For example, Engagement Zones, a type of heatmap, show the parts of your page that people interact with most. On the flip side, rage click maps point to the most problematic spots for user experience.)

• Surveys for continued market research, demographic data, and user persona info—we have free ready-made templates for all three! 🙌

• Recordings to see how individual users behave on your website or product

• Metrics like customer lifetime value (CLV), how much a customer spends with you over time, and repeat purchase rate, the percentage of customers who return for another transaction

Keep all your essential metrics in one easy-to-monitor spot with your Hotjar Dashboard. Create custom key performance indicators (KPIs) and charts using Trends and add them to your dashboard. When you notice an issue, investigate and resolve it promptly for your customers.

2. Lean into your identity and values

In a poll, 82% of shoppers say they want a company’s values to match their own. And 75% say they’ve taken their business elsewhere over a conflict in values.

To keep customers from jumping ship, you need a consistent, well-communicated brand identity, which is like your brand’s personality—it’s the sum of your visual elements, products or services, communication style, and core values.

Don’t be afraid to let your values shine through in your messaging and marketing campaigns. While making a statement may put off some prospects, you connect more strongly with right-fit customers, the kind who stick around and sing your praises to others.

Your values need to be more than a sign that you hang on your office wall—they should guide every decision your company makes, from customer support to product design. Your customers will notice, and your consistency and transparency will create a sense of trust and loyalty.

3. Ask for (and implement) customer feedback

The best way to give customers what they want—the products and experiences that hook them for life on your brand—is to ask them what they want. One way to do that is with Hotjar Feedback. Add a feedback widget to any website page to allow customers to tell you their thoughts.

Ensure you hit the mark by launching customer surveys. When working toward improving loyalty, focus on these two types:

1. Customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys let your customers rate their experience on a scale of 1–5. (Shoot for the moon—strive for fives!) 

2. Net Promoter Score® (NPS) surveys measure how likely your customers are to recommend your product or service to a friend. (Look for scores of nine and ten on this one. These are your ‘Promoters’, the loyal brand ambassadors who drive business growth.)

No matter which survey type you choose, provide your customers with at least one open-ended question for additional comments. These yield rich qualitative insights (the ‘why’) to back up your quantitative rating scale data (the 'what’).

4. Build a community

Human connection is a powerful thing. Giving your customers a chance to chat, build relationships, and help each other solve problems can be the difference between a good experience and an incredible one. 

For many, community brings to mind a social media presence on a third-party site, like Discord, Facebook, or LinkedIn, or a self-hosted forum. While these are terrific, they aren’t your only options to provide a place for discussion and support.

Other ways to build a community include

• Blogs: get even more mileage from your content marketing by using blog posts to jumpstart conversation. Keep your comments open—or add a ‘share’ button so loyal fans can move the discussion to their preferred social media platform. 

• Webinars: hosting live events like webinars lets you provide helpful content in an alternative format and fosters a sense of community. Make time for a question-and-answer session at the end, or choose a hosting platform that allows chat and poll features to boost engagement. 

• Newsletters: encourage communication by posing questions, and create a sense of community by including a ‘customer spotlight’ section or user-submitted content. (For example, our Hotjar Love to Grow newsletter has more than 100,000 subscribers! ❤️) 

• In-person events: offering conferences and conventions builds your company’s visibility and reputation. These events also help your customers connect with your brand and each other in new ways—sparking a sense of fun that inspires loyalty.

5. Provide exceptional service and support

Whether you’re a SaaS company or an ecommerce retailer, your company’s reputation hinges on service and support. What’s more, 61% of buyers say they would switch to a competitor after a single bad customer service experience.

Providing consistently good customer service and support—say, resolving issues in a professional and timely way—improves customer satisfaction and increases trust. 

Go above and beyond by showing customers that you don’t just listen—you care. One way to do this is to take the time to respond to feedback, whether it’s negative or positive. This level of empathy and attention makes people more likely to forgive your missteps and stick around longer.

Another tip? If you see a trend in feedback or survey responses about your customer service, investigate further with one-on-one interviews. For example, say your survey responses (or rage click maps) show that people struggle with your customer knowledge base. You could conduct interviews to see how people interact with it and ask follow-up questions on how to improve.

Hotjar Engage lets you connect with a pool of 200,000+ potential participants and schedule and record your interviews. You gain empathy for the user experience—and learn new ways to replace friction with delight.

Put your customer first to unlock loyalty

Customers notice when you invest time and energy into getting to know them and improving every possible touchpoint they have with your brand. By gathering insights from real customers, you discover new ways to make their lives easier and more delightful. In the process, you create loyal customers who help you grow your business.