By: David Chung
Getting new customers to enter your store is certainly important, but keeping your customers coming back again and continuing to buy is the key to any great business.
Apart from revenue, there is a tremendous advantage that comes from creating Die-Hard Customers or Fans. Many Die-Hard Fans become brand ambassadors, recommending your business to their friends, family, and social media connections and spreading the word about their great experiences working with your company. Cultivating these Fans is critically important for any long-term and stable business.
Every business needs Die-Hard Fans and every executive wants to create them.

Unfortunately, how to create and sustain them is one of the greatest challenges that every company faces. 

In the reality of today’s competitive business environment, your customers don’t feel great happiness or surprise if you only fulfill their expectations. To create Die-Hard Fans, you should discover and fulfill not only your customers’ stated needs but also their unexpressed wants. This is not an easy task, but it is worth doing to turn your competitors’ customers into your own Die-Hard Fans.
In my mind, there are some areas about which customers are concerned but they do not always express them directly to their product and service providers.

Every customer wants…

  • …to buy personalized products, but they don’t want to answer a lot of questions during the long and complex customization process.
  • …to visualize or feel the outcome before they pay for the product or service.
  • …to enjoy all-around support from their product and service providers every time they need it.

…to be respected during the whole shopping journey. In reality, many shopkeepers neglect customers during and after the payment process

As a business executive, do you want to fulfill these areas through one simple framework? If so, the C.A.R.E. strategy is for you.

What C.A.R.E. stands for

  • Customizing your products in the most easy and enjoyable ways
  • Actualizing the outcomes of your products in your customer’s mind (before purchase)
  • Resolving your customer’s questions, concerns, and doubts after they purchase your products
  • Evaluating your customer’s experience in the last touchpoints of every shopping or servicing journey
For your reference, below are case studies with short videos for each area.

Area 1: Customizing your products in the most easy and enjoyable ways

Pizza Hut is piloting a new interactive digital tabletop that enables customers to design their pizza, order, and then play games while they wait. This new technology allows customers to choose the size of their pizza, their crust, toppings, cheese amounts, and more via their tabletop. The program includes step-by-step visuals to guide the selections and enables tableside payment and gaming apps to entertain guests while they wait for their order.

Area 2: Actualizing the outcomes of your products in your customer’s mind

The Cimagine solution is the most robust AR technology available today that can superimpose textual or figural information onto the natural environment without the need for any predefined reference marker. Cimagine’s patent-pending 360o Super Reality technology ensures that the AR object is realistically rendered to maintain scale and position. This allows users to view the object from all angles and distances. The AR object can be touched and accurately manipulated on screen to define the best fit within the intended environment.
Area 3: Resolving your customer’s questions, concerns, and doubts after they purchase your products 
Topman customers in the UK are now able to connect with stylists in the London flagship stores from anywhere in the world. Customers can seek advice and, after answering some basic questions about who they are and what they are looking for, receive a response from an in-store stylist who will pick out outfits and show them to the customer through either a pre-recorded video or a live video chat.
Area 4: Evaluating your customer’s experience in the last touchpoints of every shopping or servicing journey 
The Real Greek restaurant in London’s Westfield mall now prompts customers to rate their experience when they go to pay. The customer will rate the experience from 0 to 9.
This type of rating, which is quick, anonymous, and non-intrusive for customers, is resulting in high response rates and allows businesses to gather reliable feedback when the customer’s experience is fresh in his or her mind, and business can access this information within 24 hours.
Conclusion
If you really want to build your business on Die-Hand Fans and brand evangelists, you have to exceed your customers’ expectations. Whether that means making an effort to put your customers in the limelight or offering extreme convenience is up to you. Just make sure you’re doing something that makes you hard to replace and impossible to forget.
Don’t just think about it—do something for your customers and let them feel surprise NOW!

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