There is saying “customer is god”, “customer is everything”, “businesses are from customers, customers not from business”, “if you don’t care your customer then other will do”. All these sayings are leads to only one conclusion, all businesses needs customers, the more customers you attract – the more your business grow. In all this often business and corporate forgets the existing customer’s value.

You've read the studies that show it costs many more times to win a new customer than to retain an existing one. You know the secret to making use of this statistic is to increase customer loyalty. But since customer loyalty is not something you can go to OfficeMax and buy, you may be racking your brains trying to figure out where to start improving the loyalty of your customers. Some of the facts might surprise you.

According to some researches the reason most customers leave has nothing to do with the product. In fact, most customers say they are satisfied right before leaving. According to Allegiance, Inc., a provider of enterprise feedback management (EFM) solutions, companies need to go beyond customer satisfaction to build loyalty and engagement.

To keep companies from having to spend the extra money to replace lost customers there are some simple ways, methods to retain the customer loyalty in your company and product. “Companies are losing customers at a staggering rate without really hearing from them or understanding why,” said Kyle LaMalfa, Allegiance best practices and loyalty expert. “By identifying what drives customer loyalty and engagement, companies can begin to develop best practices that will have a direct impact on customer retention and profits.” Following are some new and old tips to retain you customer for forever.

--> Fundamental: Give customers what they expect. Companies need to first identify and understand customer expectations, and then provide value for the dollars spent in terms of product quality and service.

--> Timely run customer feedback Surveys: Use short surveys that are unbiased and well structured. Employ random sampling to avoid survey fatigue. Create a centralized system for managing feedback throughout the enterprise. Technology such as enterprise feedback management will help to centralize surveys and customer feedback and track both qualitative and quantitative information. Track customer feedback over time and compare with revenues and profits over that same period. Determine how outcome should be measured, whether by satisfaction, likelihood to purchase again, likelihood to recommend, or other factors.

--> Keep learning trends & changing customer taste: Turn complaints into opportunities. Quickly resolve customer complaints to build loyalty and show them you care. Monitor things like time to resolution and customer satisfaction levels once complaints are resolved.

--> Don’t disguise customer with rewards schemes: Points and rewards encourage repeat purchases, but don’t actually build loyalty. True loyalty comes when customers purchase products without being bribed. Practically it’s very difficult but you can get this situation in your customer relation when you able to provide top level customer satisfaction by product and after sale services. --> Bi-directional communication between company and customer: Engage customers in a two-way dialog. Gather feedback consistently from multiple sources, respond to feedback quickly and personally, and then organize feedback to track results.

--> Build opportunities for repeat business: Monitor what customers request most and offer products or services that compliment other purchases. Use technology to track, classify and categorize open-ended feedback.

--> Build a strong analysis and trend recongniser (Marketing & Sales) department: Who to predict future loyalty. Analyze information to reveal the most important area of focus for customer loyalty and how it changes over time. Use feedback data to understand customer intentions and motivations (not just what they buy, but why).