By Jill Griffin
1. Build staff loyalty
It’s a fact: Firms with high levels of customer loyalty have also earned
high levels of staff loyalty. It’s nearly impossible to build strong customer
loyalty if your staff is in a state of constant turnover. Why? Because
customers buy relationships and familiarity. They want to buy from people
who know them and their preferences. Key rule of loyalty: serve your employees
first so they, in turn, can serve your customers.
2. Practice the 80/20 Rule
All customers are not created equal. Roughly speaking, 80% of your revenue
is being generated by 20% of your customers. A smart company segments
customers by value and monitors activities closely to ensure high-value
customers get their fair share of special offers and promotions. Unlike
many firms that simply measure overall redemption, these savvy loyalty
builders pay close attention to who redeems.
3. Know your loyalty stages and ensure your customers
are moving through them
Customers become loyal to a company and its products and services one
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 Profit Generator ™ Loyalty System comprises
six stages: suspect, prospect, first time customer, repeat customer, client
and advocate. By understanding the customer’s current loyalty stage, you
can better determine what’s necessary to move that customer up to the
next level of loyalty. If your customer relationship processes and programs
aren't moving customers forward, rethink them.
4. Serve first. Sell second
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 that is pleasant, productive and personalized—and
if you don't deliver, they'll leave.
5. Aggressively seek out customer complaints.
For most companies, only 10% of complaints get articulated by customers.
The other 90% remain unspoken. They 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, an unhappy
customer can now reach thousands of your would-be customers in a few keystrokes.
Head off bad press before it happens. Make it easy for customers to complain,
and treat complaints seriously. Establish firm guidelines regarding customer
response time, reporting and trend analysis. Make employee complaint monitoring
a key tool for executive decision-making.
6. Get and stay responsive
Research shows that responsiveness is closely tied to a customer’s perception
of good service. The Internet has empowered customers to expect round-the-clock
customer service. Technology tools such as customer self-service, e-mail
management and live chat/web call-back are vital elements in a company’s
responsiveness plan.
7. Know your customer’s definition of value
Knowing how your customers experience 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 their definitions
are constantly changing. Invest in customer loyalty research that enables
you to understand, through the eyes of the customer, how well you deliver
value.
8. Win back lost customers
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% to 40% of its customers every
year, it’s imperative that firms create hard-working strategies, not only
for acquisition and retention but also for win-back. Since no customer
retention program can be 100% foolproof, it follows that every company
needs a process for recapturing those high-value customers who depart.
Think of it as loyalty insurance.
9. Use multiple channels to serve the same customers
well
Research suggests customers who engage with a firm through multiple channels
exhibit deeper loyalty than single channel customers. But take note: this
finding assumes customers receive the same consistent service whether
coming into the store, logging on the Website or calling the service center.
To accomplish this, your firm must internally coordinate sales and service
across multiple channels so that customer preferences are always accessible.
Today’s customers expect to hop from channel to channel and they expect
good service to follow.
10. Give your front line the skills to perform
Increasingly, for many companies, the employee "front line"
is a call center where agents interact with customers. These agents will
be the "loyalty warriors" of the future. Converged call centers
that bring together multi-channel access points (phone, fax, e-mail and
Web) are on the rise. Gartner Group estimates that 70% of North America’s
call centers will migrate to multi-channel contact centers by 2005. This
means agents need to be equally equipped to write a well-written e-mail
reply, navigate the company Website and be helpful and friendly on a phone
call.
11. Collaborate with your channel partners
In today’s complex marketplace, a firm is often dependent on many suppliers
to 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 data base program into a system that could be shared
by all channel partners. By refusing to hoard the information, the manufacturer
helped create a blended-channel strategy that built greater customer loyalty
throughout the distribution chain.
12. Store your data in one
centralized database
Most firms lack a 360-degree view of their customer because they have
no centralized database. Billing departments, sales divisions and customer
service centers might all have their own databases, 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 be combined into a centralized customer database. Without
it, the firm is greatly handicapped in its efforts to optimally serve
the customer.
You can learn more about excellent customer service
at the following AMA seminars:
Author Bio: Jill Griffin is the author of How
To Earn It, How To Keep It (Second Edition, Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Company).
|
