The development of customer loyalty was discussed at the Retail Week Central Asia forum during the expert session ‘Customer service and loyalty – as a guarantee of growth and efficiency improvement’, 17 October 2024 in Tashkent.
The growth of the company’s profit directly depends on increasing the number of regular customers. For this purpose, it is necessary to work with customer loyalty. How to do it? Forum experts were looking for an answer to this question.
Maria Stroeva, Marketing Director of M Cosmetic, told how she motivates her team to develop customer loyalty: ‘We ourselves are customers of our own chain and use its services, and we should treat the customer the way we would like them to treat us as a customer’.
Shavkat Rasulov, marketing director of Baraka Market, said that the company offers customers to participate in the process of improving service. He shared the experience of the ‘Idea for a Million’ campaign. The company announced a prize of 1 million bonuses, which goes to the customer’s card, in exchange for the customer going to a survey – a google form to write his ideas on what he would improve if he became a shop director. The speaker said the company invited shoppers from its own social networks to participate. ‘We got a lot of sound advice,’ Speaker confirmed. ‘It all works to improve customer service,’ the expert said confidently.
Elena Klyat, marketing director of Skorozvon, urged to make service above expectations, to get ahead of the expectations of their clients, to give them more. According to the expert, recommendations in the form of word of mouth and ambassadors work better than any advertising. ‘If you want to be recommended, make your clients remember you,’ the speaker said. The expert pointed out that attracting new clients is an exhaustible resource, it is equally important to work on maintaining the loyalty of existing clients: ‘A loyal client will always come to us, no matter what we change’. Such a client, according to the speaker, will be eager to mention their favourite brand in their social networks, do interviews with them and the like. The expert also recommends using many different channels, including calls, chatbots, social networks, voice assistants and many others. It is equally important to provide personalised attention to the customer based on their shopping experience and interests.
Shinar Zhanibekova, CEO of digital communications agency Media Marketing, spoke about the principles of customer loyalty development in Kazakhstan. The expert cited statistics. In Kazakhstan, 72.4 per cent of purchases are made through marketplaces, while sales and retail through their own online resources account for 27.6 per cent. Offline, in her opinion, will go online in the short term. In Kazakhstan, according to the speaker, there is a decline in in-store shopping, ‘everyone prefers online shopping and retailers are rocking those networks where shopping centres are located. Here the consumer behaviour is that people do not just go shopping, here the driver is that people go to the mall to have fun with the whole family and make purchases’. The speaker also named the top topics on the retail market in Kazakhstan: fashion for healthy lifestyle, education, religion, use of national ornaments in clothes. Among marketing trends, she also mentioned the importance of recommendations, the connection of artificial intelligence, and personalised communication with the client.
