Today’s customers are smarter, better informed and more intolerant of being “sold” than ever before. They expect doing business with you to be as hassle-free and gratifying for them as possible. When they experience good service elsewhere, they bring an if-they-can-do-it-why-can’t-you? attitude to their next transaction with you. They believe you earn their business with service[…]
Research shows that responsiveness is closely tied to a customer’s perception of good service. The advent of the internet, particularly social media platforms, has changed the customer’s perception of responsiveness. More and more, customers are coming to expect round-the-clock customer service. Additionally, customers now arrive at a website time-starved and eager to locate answers. Technology tools such as[…]
For most companies, only 10 percent of complaints are ever articulated by customers. The other 90 percent are unarticulated and manifest themselves in many negative ways: unpaid invoices; lack of courtesy to your front line service reps; and above all, negative word of mouth. With the internet, especially social media, an unhappy customer can now reach thousands[…]
The loyalty password is value. Knowing how your customer experiences value and then delivering on those terms is critical to building strong customer loyalty. But knowing your customer’s true definition of value is not easy because value definitions are constantly changing. Invest in customer loyalty research that enables you to understand, through the eyes of the customer, how well you[…]
Research shows that a business is twice as likely to successfully sell to a lost customer as to a brand new prospect Yet winning back lost customers is frequently the most overlooked source for incremental revenue in many firms. Why? Because most firms consider a lost customer a lost cause. With the average company losing 20-40[…]
Research suggests customers who engage with a firm through multiple channels exhibit deeper loyalty than single-channel customers. But take note: this finding assumes the customer gets the same consistent service whether coming into the store, logging onto the website or calling the service center. To accomplish this, your firm must internally coordinate sales and service across multiple[…]
Most firms lack a 360 degree view of their customers because they have no centralized database. Billing departments, sales divisions and customer service centers might all have their own database, with no effective means for creating a complete customer information composite. To effectively implement a sound customer loyalty strategy, data from all customer touch points must[…]
In today’s complex marketplace, a firm is often dependent on many suppliers to help serve its customers. Embracing these supply chain relationships for the greater good of the ultimate customer creates customer value that is hard for competitors to match. For example, a European auto manufacturer converted its customer database program into a system that could be[…]
Increasingly, the employee front line is a call center where agents interact with customers. These agents are the loyalty warriors of the future. Converged call centers that bring together multichannel access points (phone, email, chat, social media) are no longer the exception, but the rule. This means these agents need to be equipped as much to produce[…]
Nothing creates warm-fuzzy feelings quite like cookies. That’s why Howdy Honda in Austin, TX recently used LoyaltyTrac, their service rewards program, to conduct an email campaign centered around the holidays and cookies. Colorful, cheerful emails were sent to all of Howdy Honda’s service reward members, encouraging them to submit their favorite holiday cookie recipe to be included in a[…]