In building customer loyalty, the 80/20 rule is alive and well. Roughly speaking, 80 percent of your revenue is being generated by 20 percent of your customers. All customers are not created equal. Some represent more long-term value to your firm than others. A smart company segments customers by value and monitors activities closely to ensure high value customers get their[…]
It’s a fact: any firm with a high level of customer loyalty has also earned a high level of staff loyalty. It’s darn near impossible to build strong customer loyalty with a staff that is in constant turnover. Why? Because customers buy relationships and familiarity. They want to buy from people who know them and their preferences. The key[…]
A customer becomes loyal to a company and its products and service on step at a time. By understanding the customer’s current loyalty stage, you can better determine what’s necessary to move that customer to the next level of loyalty. Our “Growing Loyal Customers” system comprises six stages: suspect, prospect, first-time customer, repeat customer, client and[…]
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[…]
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[…]