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The best customers are repeat customers. That is the reason building brand loyalty is essential for any business. Trying to attract new people and encourage them to buy products can be like reinventing the wheel. Getting to know fans and loyal customers are key to ensuring they keep buying regularly. Sentiment analysis tools are an effective way of making this work.
What Is Sentiment Analysis?
Sentiment analysis is a process of analyzing texts with AI tools to interpret feelings and attitudes from user-generated texts such as reviews, social media updates, and comments on the web. These tools use Natural Language Processing to interpret feelings from content and assign the text a rating from very positive to very negative.
Data from sentiment analysis is derived from content users create themselves. A social media post that mentions a brand or a review of a meal in a restaurant can be analyzed to detect underlying attitudes in the text.
Additionally, mentions of competitors contribute to the general view of how customers feel about similar kinds of products in the same industry. A company can fill in the gap left by competitors and create a product that fulfills or exceeds expectations. This approach can attract interest from those who are new to a brand and deepen customer loyalty.
Why Is Customer Loyalty Essential?
Human beings are creatures of habit. Everyone understands what it is like to have an attachment to a favorite sports team, a beloved actor or film franchise, or a local restaurant. It is easier for people to continue ordering food from places they rely on for quality and a decent price or to purchase shoes from a brand that has provided shoes that look and feel good consistently.
Surveys support the notion that the most valuable marketing efforts are focused on fostering relationships with existing customers. According to Bain & Company, a 5% increase in customer retention can increase profitability by 75%. Most companies agree that retaining customers is less expensive than drumming up new business According to the National Law Review, it can cost five times more to find new customers than to keep old ones.
Customers like to stick with a brand because of ease and brand engagement. Once the customer is in a certain location, online or offline, it is easier to stay there. Shopping is not a leisurely experience for many people, especially in the era of eCommerce. Consumers want shopping to be easy, pleasant, and quick so they can go on to other things.
Why Amazon’s Customers Are Loyal
This preference for speed, efficiency, and consistency may be a driving force behind Amazon’s success. This leading retailer keeps building on past successes and encourages shoppers to make repeat purchases with recommendations for items similar to those they purchased on a previous visit.
Amazon is the pioneer of providing customer recommendations, and it is now able to take its own items and products into top position since they can focus on customers who are already on the site. For instance, of those who shopped on Amazon, half said they were members of Amazon Prime.
The reason why Amazon Prime is popular is not just the outstanding selection of programming, but customers are already on the eCommerce site shopping anyway and they join Amazon Prime because they trust Amazon’s reliable brand and reputation.
In addition, Amazon’s private label products are in many cases outperforming items posted by third-party sellers. Once customers are on Amazon’s site, are members of Amazon Prime, and read Amazon reviews, why wouldn’t they trust an Amazon private-label product?
Sentiment Analysis and Brand Loyalty
Not every business can become as influential as retail giant Amazon, but every company can learn from the leaders. If sentiment analysis reveals customer service is sluggish, not that helpful, and less than enthusiastic, find ways to focus more on the customer.
For speed, consider using chatbots rather than live representatives, since automated tools respond to visitor requests instantly and provide quick answers to questions.
On the other hand, if the results from sentiment analysis indicate that customer service feels impersonal, use live customer service representatives on the website and run sentiment analysis on customer service chats to see where responses can be more personalized and focused on the visitor.
Product Development
Sentiment analysis should be done in scale to provide the maximum amount of feedback from customers about features and products. If a few people comment that they don’t like the canary yellow doll sweaters, it can be dismissed if there are just three out of a hundred, but if 25% of customers dislike the color scheme of doll clothing, it may be time to offer alternatives.
It can be difficult to predict what priorities customers may have until sentiment analysis is used to understand reviews. A product development team can spend significant time developing a vacuum cleaner that has powerful suction capability only to discover that customers feel the motor is too loud and they preferred the older model filter. Making upgrades on the vacuum cleaner according to reviews can encourage these reviewers to keep purchasing the product.
Give and Take
Customers like to feel they are listened to. Marketing efforts often focus on brand storytelling, but consumer listening is just as important. Prioritizing the customer, from answering questions promptly to paying attention to feedback on products and features, is key to retaining them and encouraging brand loyalty.
