Enhancing Customer Loyalty for Pet Stores (Part 4)

If you’re a pet store owner, you know that there are a handful of different types of customers that shop at your store. There are the ones that shop there for everything, they’re in your pet store once or twice or more times per month, and they engage with you (personally or online). They are your favorite type of customer, the Class A customer.

There are those that shop at your pet store occasionally, maybe once or twice every two to three months. They like you and you’re convenient, but they aren’t fully engaged with your brand and probably don’t think about you too much (sorry!). They are the Class B customer.

Then you’ve also got the customers that are one-offs, they’ve stopped in once or twice throughout the whole year to pick something up they realized they needed today. They do most of their shopping elsewhere. They are your Class C customer.

Does this sound familiar? How would you go about moving some of those people in the latter two categories into that upper echelon of customers for your pet store? If you haven’t already checked out Parts 1-3 of Enhancing Customer Loyalty for Pet Stores, you can do that HERE.

Better yet, you can get this stuff delivered to your inbox once a month for free, with our editor’s top picks made available to you! Join our growing community for pet store owners and get growing with these helpful tips, tools, resources, and info for pet store marketing.

Enhancing Customer Loyalty
For Pet Stores

There are three main areas we want to focus on for Part 4 of enhancing customer loyalty for pet stores. All three of them are items we have written about in the past, and if you want more information on them then feel free to go to our Blog page and use the search function and the directory.

1. Seeking Feedback from Customers

Time to stop focusing on “customer service” and start really thinking about the “customer experience.” Take a look at the chart to the right to see what we mean and some major differences between the two.

As a pet store owner, if some of your major concerns are what happens on the odd mishap that creates a “customer service” issue in the store, well, those are the anomalies! What can you be doing to significantly improve the customer experience for the vast majority of your customers that aren’t having an issue, but could have an improved experience? There are many ways to do this…take a look back at Parts 1-3 of this series for a few ideas!

2. Social Media to Improve Customer Experience

For newer and younger customers, social media is THE place to interact with their brands. As a pet store owner, being on top of your social media inboxes and pages can not only prevent problems from accruing but can actually be an untapped opportunity to bring in further business from referrals.

Responding promptly and courteously to your customers’ queries can increase their trust and loyalty to your brand, and oftentimes the best part about it is that it’s public. If you can right the wrong, everybody can see it and it looks great on your pet store and your pet store’s marketing. If this is one-too-many marketing tasks for you to manage as a pet store owner, we’ve got a solution for you, and it starts with a simple call. What do you have to lose?

3. Gather and Respond to Reviews

Reviews are so, so, so important for today’s customers! Here are a few crazy stats for you:

So, what are you doing to gather reviews for your pet store? Asking for them via email after purchases? At the register? Making it easy for customers to do it in-store with a QR code on a business card, bag stuffer, or receipt? Offering a coupon or discount for leaving a review? All of these incentives and measures work to grow your business and increase customer loyalty for pet stores.

Conclusion

We hope you’ve found this installment of the “enhancing customer loyalty for pet stores” informative and helpful. We’re always open to feedback and suggestions so don’t hesitate to reach out to us! How have you grown your business with both new and existing customers through methods or strategies like these? What else are you doing to get the Class B customers into the Class A tier? We’d love to know!