Reaching out new clients is a must for any business for survival particularly in the era of “new economy” which is being designed with digital technologies. But it is articulated by the surveys and research that the cost of getting a new customer is more than 10 folds of the cost of keeping an existing client. Besides this fact, existing clients helps to decrease the cost of acquiring new clients by helping to attract new customers. For example, “customer referral” has always been an important tool to attract new customers. But the digital channels including the social media has been leveraging this effect enormously by “digital ear-to-ear” customer reference systems. This is such a strong effect that, some of the current clients become “brand ambassadors” of the business in the digital world. The situation is in reverse order when it comes to unsatisfied customers case. There is a simple and ugly statistics; a satisfied and happy client promotes the satisfaction to 1 person or business, while an unsatisfied client to 7 persons or businesses. That’s why ensuring customer satisfaction and earmarking necessary time and sources for it and working for having loyal customers is one of the main issues of a successful business. It is given in the following sections some practical hints for micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSME) for ensuring customer loyalty.

1. Focusing on right target groups of customers for marketing efforts: Marketing is the art of compliance which means that your target customer groups must be compatible with the potential of your business; the markets your business is trying to serve should be compatible with your business; the ways and tools of marketing and communication should be compatible with the target customers; the sales efforts should be compatible with your business. As a conclusion, the content of your marketing activities should be in coherence with “the customer” in its total habitat. It is not possible to attract the attention of a prospect customer in its maximum by just conveying “generic messages” to the whole universe of the market. The first thing is to decide on the right customer segments in the market; then knowing exactly the purchasing story of the targeted customers and finally communicating through appropriate channels and with appropriate messages to the target customers.
2. Being trustworthy and emphatic with your customers: Being trustworthy is a bigger issue in small companies than a bigger company, since people tend to rely on big establishments. Hence, it is one of the critical issues of marketing, giving the feeling of being reliable, for MSMEs. Actually, it is a simple issue if, what your business proposes is what your business is able to provide. Another issue of reliability is to make your clients sure that each time they will get the same products and service. If it is achieved, this will differentiate your business from the competitors. On the other hand, an unpleasant experience will be reflected to other customers. That’s why, any feedback from the client side is a valuable input to improve customer experience and satisfaction level. Customer complaints are the most practical way of getting the customer feedback. Of course, it is expected a prompt response to any customer complaint in either way. You need to show your efforts to the other customers on getting the feedback, responding quickly, resolving any issue of complaint. If you are using digital channels and social media, it is even more important. But if you have a sound customer feedback management system, any customer complaint will pave the road to a stronger brand image.
3. Taking care of customer opinion: Your business should get the benefit of getting opinions from the clients by informing them for any innovation or change in your business, products or services. There are dual effects of such an effort: one is to take the target customers of your products/services to the innovation efforts of your business, and this will decrease the risk of not being successful; and the other effect is, since your customers will have a feeling of being a part of the process, it will strengthen the ties with your brand and they will have more tendency to being a (strongly) loyal customer.

Keeping the customer loyalty is key to a long-term success and sustainability of any business whether big or small. In line with the importance of the topic, the subject will continue to be discussed in the next article with more ways and tools on improving the customer loyalty.