Customer loyalty is key to a fruitful business

Ms. Lydia Esenam Adzimah said businesses must work to gain customer loyalty and this “loyalty comes with hard work and being dedicated to your customer.”

Ms. Adzimah said this in an exclusive interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on the week-long marking of World Customer Service.

The Customer expert said once the business operators were providing services, customers would be recommending ways of doing the business right; “you then have to understand that they are not just customers but have become loyal because they tend to return to your business and recommend you to other people.”

In that regard, Ms. Esinam informed that customers were valuable for businesses no matter how small their contributions were because they helped to run businesses and brought value to the business operator.

“They help to determine the changing trends of your business, and so the need to listen to customers attentively as they give recommendations on your business on how you will need to strategize your business and the direction to go,” she said.

Ms. Adzimah observed that a business operator who cared about his or her customers would realize that customer trends had changed. “Customers are very dynamic and their dynamism revolves around your business.”

Ms. Adzimah therefore observed that if the business operator understood customer behaviour, they would be mindful in inculcating technology that would let the customer be comfortable because the customer was not only paying for value but also for convenience.

She advised that,” in order not to frustrate customer when they are accessing service, which will create a hostile relationship between customers and service providers, business operators should inculcate a user-friendly service in their business.”

“It’s important to let customers understand how your service works; it could be a simple service user manual, let them know how it works, what to do at what particular time so they can use your service,” she added.

Explaining how a well-motivated staff could promote customer loyalty, Ms. Adzimah said, “What kind of people are we hiring; what kind of people we are bringing onboard. Are they people who need a job and so we hire them or are they people who are passionate about what they do and ready to go the extra mile on the business.”

She indicated that there was the need for workers to understand that they were not working “for the organization, but working with the organization. In that sense, you need to drive everybody towards the vision of your organization. Once you do that, whatever effort the person is putting into the work, the person is doing it with a deliberate mindset or aiming to the vision of your business.”

Ms. Adzimah indicated that, regardless of who was employed, training would let people understand the basic operations customers brought to your business.

“Train them in terms of human relations, in terms of how they are going to deal with customers, how they bring passion into their job and attain the overall vision, so they do not relate poorly to your customers.”