Sean Byrnes
CEO and Co-Founder, Outlier
What does customer loyalty mean to you?
Customer loyalty means having a strong relationship, built on trust, with a customer. It’s a relationship that drives an individual to prefer buying from your business, even when other equivalent options exist. Many businesses think they have loyalty when in reality they simply have the cheapest option or only product of their type. True customer loyalty survives competitive pressures and options that are cheaper or newer due to strong trust in the brand.
How can companies begin to identify when and where their customer loyalty strategy needs to improvement?
No business can retain 100% of its customers. But examining losses and how they differ from customers you retain is the strongest indicator of what drives loyalty. Often, the differences will be significant and can reveal your true competitive advantage. When the difference between indicators for lost customers and retained customers becomes smaller, that’s a tip-off that there’s a problem with loyalty and you need to identify and fix the root cause.
What are the most important components of the customer experience?
The most important part of any customer experience is their very first moment with your product, service or brand. This touchpoint defines the rest of their experience, which may last for decades. That first moment should be painless, rewarding and magical. If you can do that, and continue it, you’ll form the basis of a deep and lasting customer relationship.
How is Artificial Intelligence and ML helping empower more effective customer loyalty strategies?
Artificial intelligence allows companies to analyze their customers and behaviors in greater detail than ever before. Instead of selecting a few customer segments to analyze, an AI system can analyze every possible customer segmentation. This can unlock new and more powerful ways to think about customer loyalty and what drives it across segments.
