According to Accenture’s 2016 Global Consumer Pulse Survey, 78% of consumers report they are retracting loyalty at a faster pace than three years ago. Additionally, more than half of the most loyal customers actively recommend brands to others, and 14% express their loyalty by publicly endorsing or defending the company via social media. In today’s hyper-competitive business environment, companies must rethink loyalty and maximize the value of the most loyal customers.
The more you know about your customers the less chance you’ll lose them to a competitor, and losing customers means you need to find replacement customers—and that gets expensive. In fact, it is six to seven times more expensive to attract a new customer than it is to retain an existing one. For businesses, these statistics beg the question: What keeps customers loyal? When another brand is just a tap or click away, what keeps your customers from cheating on you?
Offer Compelling Products/Services
Undoubtedly, to inspire customer loyalty your product or service must be high-quality and competitively priced. And, it has to offer compelling value and differentiate itself, in some way, from a competing product or service. But beyond the product or service itself, and traditional loyalty programs, there are a number of brand experiences that can affect customers’ loyalty to your business.
Deliver Seamless, Omni-channel Customer Experiences
Omni-channel customer experience is no longer just an option—it’s a necessity. Engaging consumers with the precise message at the right time on the right channel is a key driver of customer loyalty today.
Results of a 2016 Harvard Business Review study focusing on which channels customers use and why, and their overall shopping experience, revealed the more channels customers use, the more valuable they are. Omni-channel customers spent an average of 4% more on every shopping occasion in the store, and 10% more online than single-channel customers. Additionally, with every additional channel they used, the shoppers spent more money in the store (e.g. customers who used 4+ channels spent 9% more in the store, on average, when compared to those who used just one channel).
Listen to Customer Feedback
In the past, listening to your customers meant listening to them the old-fashioned way—hearing them speak. Today, however, listening to customers can happen in a variety of ways including insight they share via social media and by collecting customer data via online polls or surveys.
Create products people actually want. McDonald’s—facing declining sales and a bleak future—staged a dramatic turnaround by listening to customers and meeting a longtime demand—breakfast served all day. In the first quarter of 2026, U.S. salesjumped 5.4%, and quarterly profits rose 35% over the previous year. The lesson is clear: give customers what they want.
Maintain and Strengthen Customer Loyalty
An effective tool for gathering customer feedback is Sogolytics’s Customer Satisfaction Surveys which allow you to create powerful, easy-to-create surveys that invite customers to share feedback, knowledge, and data. This dynamic tool helps you identify and engage your most loyal customers, and ultimately shape more long-term customer relationships.
With one simple “drag and drop”question—“How likely are you to recommend [brand/product/service], to a friend or colleague?”—Sogolytics’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) captures customer feedback in real time, and automatically sends you daily notifications. NPS questions segment your customers into “Promoters,” “Passives,” and “Detractors,” enabling you to consistently measure and impact customer loyalty.
Sogolytics’s unique Rules & Alerts feature helps you proactively manage customer concerns in real time. When a customer responds negatively to a survey question, your team is instantly notified via email, so you can address customer complaints before they are shared on social media.
Leverage Data to Analyze Customer Loyalty
Data-driven analysis and technology platforms can help businesses track customer information, including when, how, and what customers purchase. Understanding this data advises businesses what future products or services to recommend to customers, as well as how to get the word out (e.g., via email, U.S. mail, social media, etc.).
Building customer loyalty is one of the most challenging aspects for businesses today. But thanks to data this challenge doesn’t have to be as difficult as it has been in the past. There are many methods for gathering customer data and gathering insights into consumer buying patterns, demographic profiles, your product or service offering, and more. It’s these details that can help you create stronger customer loyalty and more long-term customer value.
