5 ways to improve customer retention in hospitality business

Own a restaurant or a hospitality business?

If yes, then the first thing in your priority list would be to acquire new customers along with retaining the existing customers.

Acquiring new customers is a very tedious process and requires more time and effort when compared to retaining the existing ones. It cannot be simply achieved by giving some tasty food and good services.

Let’s see how this works?

First and foremost thing in any business is making your customers as your brand advocates and it can only be achieved by having a healthy and fruitful customer engagement.

Following are the 5 most important customer retention strategies one has to adapt to create exceptional customer experiences.

1. Privileged Offers:Make your customer feel special, remember their likes and dislikes, offer customized discounts & special benefits.

“59% said their opinion of a brand would be more positive if they started to receive coupons and offers that could be saved on their smart phones”

Providing offers and discounts to your customers is a great way to attract them and to drive them to your brand.

But how do you make those customers as your loyal customers?

Answer is really simple;

Make your customers happy & how would you do that?

One way to make them happy and keep them connected to your brand is through delighting your customers by sending wishes and greetings on their special occasions. The other way is by providing them some special offers and discounts.

How does this help in your business?

Most of the people have tendency to go out to celebrate their special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries, when you send a personalized greeting to your loyal customers, chances are they’ll surely remember you when they plan to go out for celebration.

When they come to your restaurant, offer them more benefits and discounts, or give them something free like a meal on the house. This will not only delight them but also increases the sales, as the person who comes to celebrate the special occasion, usually comes in with their family and friends who end up ordering more and becoming your loyal customers too.

Now the question arises is, How to create the customized offers for an individual customer and how to keep track of it?

Answer is L1.Loyalty…!!

With the help of L1.Loyalty software you can create customized offers and promote them to the individual customers, a group of customers, based on gender, age, profession and much more. You can easily track your customer behaviors with L1.Loyalty dashboard.

Not only that, you can also create customized offers and promotions to customers who haven’t visited your restaurant from quite a long time to just say them – “We Miss You”. You even have options to send a customized e-mail or an SMS saying you miss them. This will make them more likely to visit your restaurant and instills goodwill towards your brand.

2. Reward your Loyal Customers

Now that you are successfully able to bring your customer to your restaurant and made them feel privileged, it’s time to make them as your brand advocates by rewarding them with some more benefits.

First thing to do is to make them revisit to your restaurant, is by using a loyalty program. Having a loyalty program to manage and create the offers plays a major role in alluring customers back to your restaurant. All you have to do is just offer provide guests with some reward points that they can redeem into discounts or cash back or a free item on your menu etc.

“81% of consumers are more likely to continue doing business with brands that offer loyalty programs”

The most important points to remember is that you have to always customize the loyalty program based on the customer interests. One cannot simply achieve fruitful results by running generic loyalty program for each and every customer.

“73% of loyalty programs members are more likely to recommend brands with good loyalty programs”

Why does your loyalty program may fail?

The main factor that factor that leads to the failure of a loyalty program is – Lack of active customers, the more active your customers are, the more successful your loyalty program will be.

What makes your customers inactive?

If major % of your loyalty customers is inactive, then it can be due to various reasons;

The major reason is the dependency on loyalty cards; I.e. In case a customer forgets to carry their membership card, they are as good as a new customer and cannot avail any offers or discounts. It can be because of lack of proper and relevant offers and promotions or it can also be because of lack of quality of services, which an individual restaurant has to take care.

How to overcome this situation?

This is where L1.Loyalty comes into picture. L1.Loyalty is cloud based loyalty software through with you can create, customize, manage your loyalty program from any part of the world. L1.Loyalty is completely card less loyalty program which can be customized especially for any business type, so even if the customer forgets to bring the loyalty/membership card, they can simply use their phone number for identification.

Read More: https://blog.loylt.works/5-ways-to-improve-customer-retention-in-hospitality-business/

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