A Creative Example of Building Customer Loyalty From Garanti Bank

Congratulations, you followed what we always advise and built yourself a nice, sizeable loyal customer base. Now, it’s time for you to deepen your knowledge about who your loyal customers are. Interestingly enough, according to a survey by Loyaly 360, the number of marketing specialists who answer “I know who my loyal customers are and how I will communicate with them” to the question “Do you know your loyal customers?” is very low. Don’t you think this is a grave situation? Because as our classic saying goes, gaining a new customer costs seven times more than keeping one of your loyal ones. That’s why customer loyalty programs are very important. Yet, there are things you need to be careful about customer loyalty.

Customer loyalty programs are generally based on discounts. There is no problem with this approach as long as you pay attention that your discounts do not become the sole reason for your customers’ choice. Otherwise, the moment you stop offering low prices, your supposdely loyal customer who does not want to pay more for the product or service, simply leaves. For this reason, it is necessary to find a more creative and binding solution for your customer loyalty program. Customer loyalty is closely related to customer experience and customer involvement today. But you should be working toward an organic kind of customer loyalty by adding customer experience to your business.

You can decrease your loyal customer turnover rate greatly by showing your customers that you are listening to them without using marketing techniques. For this purpose, you must first create an environment for your customer to share the a connection with you. A successful example of this was recently demonstrated by Garanti Bank.

Garanti Bank, the leader of Turkish banking sector, decided that its customers should be the ones to decide the name of one of its new branches in Antalya. For this purpose, Garanti used Pisano’s real-time digital surveys. Garanti Bank offered its customers 4 name options via in those surveys. The results were tallied up after a month, and the most popular option indeed became the name of Garanti Bank branch. In short, “Anything a customer may request, Garanti Bank realizes it.”

Garanti made it possible for its customers to feel like a member of Garanti Bank family by constructing a special customer experience journey. Who wouldn’t feel a special connection to the place you helped name? Loyal customers are your brand’s best advocates, they are better than any advertisement campaign money can buy. But creating that special connection with your loyal customers requires constant contact and special care.

Who is Garanti Bank?

Founded in 1946 in Turkey, Garanti Bank is the second largest private bank in Turkey with an asset size of $84 billion USD as of September 30, 2016.

Garanti operates in all business lines of the banking sector including corporate, commercial, SME, payment systems, private, retail and investment banking. It is an integrated financial services group with leading international financial subsidiaries in the Netherlands, Russia and Romania, as well as leading financial companies in the fields of life insurance and private pensions, leasing, factoring, investment and portfolio management.