Creating a plan for customer loyalty and retention is very important to small businesses. While it takes energy and effort to retain customers, it also costs significantly less than acquiring new customers. A loyal customer will regularly repeat purchases, refer others and demonstrate an immunity to your competition.

What can a small business do to build customer loyalty?

Trust is an important factor in building customer loyalty. If the customer feels that a company is listening to their ideas and needs, they will in turn trust that you are looking out for their best interest. The trend in business today is to place customer service calls into a queue for the next available person. This may frustrate the customer, as they are calling with a potential issue and would like to speak with a live person as quickly as possible. It may benefit your business to assign a support person to each individual customer to ensure that the have a key contact person for future issues.

First impressions are very important. It is possible to develop a loyal customer if needs are handled properly and efficiently. In order to encourage customers to return, try the following:

Say thank you for the purchase or chance to provide a service.

Seek customer feedback early, and respond quickly.

Carefully guard customer privacy.

Communicate your full range of services continuously

Treat customer service costs as a worthwhile investment

Develop a customer rewards program

Develop new customer welcome promotions

Develop value added promotions

While self service seems to be the trend in business and retail today, there is something to be said for the human touch. What started as a "quick fix" for the customer has turned into frustration. What good is it to have the "self check out line" in the grocery store if you are not sure of the price of the item? Sometimes the old fashioned way is not as outdated as it seems.