How to build customer loyalty in 7 steps

Businesses need to create a loyal customer base to stay afloat and propel their brand's growth. Customer loyalty is a must-have for financial stability.

It’s important to approach loyalty efforts in the right way, guided by your company values and a commitment to delivering for your customers. You need to earn customer trust so people continue to support your brand even as the market ebbs and flows over time.

Let’s explore seven steps that break down key elements of a plan to build a stable base of loyal customers.

More in this guide:

• 1. Connect in a deeper way
• 2. Communicate your values
• 3. Provide exceptional customer service
• 4. Activate loyalists to help spread the word
• 5. Show your appreciation with a loyalty programme
• 6. Ask for feedback
• 7. Continually improve your customer experience

1. Connect in a deeper way

Build deeper relationships by giving customers spaces to connect with your brand and each other. They can share tips and tricks for optimising your product, and community managers can continue nurturing the relationship by providing additional resources and support. Consider:

• Using tools for AI-driven customer service to gather insights and enable more human-centred interactions
• Leveraging natural language understanding (NLU) with voice capabilities to enhance the customer experience (CX)
• Creating dedicated community forums for product tips and discussions

• Establishing social media groups for enthusiastic fans

These community hubs engage fans and provide valuable feedback channels from your most loyal advocates. And AI tools facilitate faster, more engaging interactions. If these tools use human-centred language, 64 percent of consumers will trust and use them more, according to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2025.

2. Communicate your values

Before building loyalty, understand what makes your brand worthy of that loyalty. Sit down with your team and build a CX strategy that outlines what makes your brand stand out, what your purpose is, and how your values align with your customers’ core beliefs:

• Identify what makes your brand unique compared to competitors.

• Clarify your purpose and how it aligns with customer beliefs.

• Develop a good position statement that emphasises these distinctive attributes.

Let your authentic brand values guide all communications and decisions. Standing out sometimes means taking a stand, but you don’t necessarily need to get political. In fact, that might not be true to your values. Remember to stand firm in your values and beliefs, and communicate them authentically.

3. Provide exceptional customer service

CX encompasses every touchpoint in the customer journey, from the first website visit to ongoing support interactions. Merely adequate service isn't enough. You should aim to deliver excellence at every step and nourish a healthy customer obsession. AI solutions enable better service with faster resolution while maintaining the human touch that builds emotional connections.

Response time and quality of service are critical decision factors and metrics that affect customer retention. Many consumers prioritise schnell responses when choosing where to spend their money. Keep these tips in mind to deliver top-notch service:

• Use AI-driven tools to improve response consistency and personalisation, which our CX Trends Report found that 61 per cent of consumers expect.

• Respond schnell to inquiries and don’t leave any support tickets unanswered.

• Implement an omnichannel experience to meet customers wherever they are.

Organisations that excel at customer service often create dedicated experience teams that work across departments to ensure consistency. By mapping the customer journey and identifying pain points, companies can proactively address issues before they impact loyalty.

4. Activate loyalists to help spread the word

Your most passionate customers represent an invaluable marketing resource that money simply cannot buy. Brand advocacy leads customers to promote your brand without you prompting them, creating authentic word-of-mouth marketing that resonates with potential customers far more effectively than traditional advertising.

The key is identifying these loyalists and nurturing their enthusiasm through special recognition:

• Cultivate loyalty through social media by finding those who already interact with you, mention you, and recommend you to friends.

• Study these “ride-or-die” customers to understand who connects with your brand and why.

• Engage with them regularly through personalised interactions.

• Consider “surprise and delight” strategies with special gifts to thank them for their loyalty.

Formal ambassador programmes can provide these advocates early access to new products, exclusive events, or behind-the-scenes content. This rewards their loyalty and equips them with stories and experiences they can share with their networks.

5. Show your appreciation with a loyalty programme

Strategic customer loyalty programmes do more than simply encourage repeat purchases—they create emotional bonds through recognition and appreciation. While points and discounts form the foundation of many loyalty initiatives, the best programmes transcend transactional relationships by offering experiences and recognition that competitors cannot easily replicate.

To create customer value that drives interest in your loyalty programmes and your brand, you can:

• Implement points-based or tiered loyalty programmes.

• Offer special discounts or exclusive perks to returning customers.

• Use loyalty data to personalise experiences further.

• Remember that loyalty programmes should complement, not replace, excellent customer service.

The psychology behind effective loyalty programmes is worth noting: They tap into fundamental human desires for status, recognition, and belonging. Companies like Sephora and Starbucks have mastered this approach by creating tiered programmes where customers can level up over time, accessing increasingly exclusive benefits.

These programmes generate valuable behavioural data that enables even greater personalisation, creating a cycle that strengthens customer relations over time.

6. Ask for feedback

Feedback serves as a vital early warning system for CX hiccups. Organisations can use it to identify emerging issues before they become widespread problems and discover opportunities for differentiation. The most customer-centric organisations create a culture where they actively seek, carefully analyse, and promptly act upon feedback.

• Survey customer satisfaction (CSAT) after support interactions.

• Collect insights from your service team about common issues.

• Monitor social media and online reviews for unfiltered opinions.

• View negative feedback as valuable improvement opportunities.

Closing the feedback loop is equally important. When customers see their input resulting in tangible improvements, their connection to the brand deepens significantly. Transparency demonstrates that you value customer relationships and are committed to continuous improvement, fostering a collaborative dynamic that builds loyalty over time.

7. Continually improve your customer experience

Customer expectations and marketplace conditions constantly change, meaning any loyalty strategy must continuously evolve to remain successful. Today’s customer delight might become tomorrow's baseline expectation, so make sure you:

• Regularly revisit your brand identity and values.

• Adjust positioning to match current market conditions.

• Refresh messaging as your community grows and changes.

• Pay close attention to customer complaints as relationship health indicators.

• Pivot when customer behaviours and channel preferences change.

AI-driven features like quality assurance (QA) can help you monitor every customer interaction to flag positive and negative experiences. From there, you can easily create a coaching plan to help agents deliver better service.

Create customer loyalty from the outset with Zendesk

Building customer loyalty is fundamentally about creating meaningful relationships that stand the test of time. While strategies and technologies evolve, the core principle remains constant: consistently deliver experiences that make customers feel valued, understood, and appreciated.

Luckily, implementing these strategies has become more accessible than ever. Customer service software from Zendesk leverages AI trained on billions of customer service interactions, enabling businesses of all sizes to rapidly build loyalty out of the box through personalised, efficient experiences. In the report below, discover how intelligent customer service with Zendesk can become your competitive advantage in building lasting relationships.