Articles
Published May 2010
Seven Steps to Help You Strengthen Customer Loyalty
The primary threat to a business in these times is the perception by customers that all they are being offered is a replaceable, interchangeable commodity. But there is a way to escape this threat of commoditization by creating enduring, loyal and human relationships with customers.
Here are seven practical techniques to help you escape market obsolescence and create a huge payoff in customer loyalty - and, ultimately, in company sustainability and profits.
1. Shine your doorknob. Research shows that customers remember the first and last minutes of a service encounter much more vividly - and for much longer than the rest of it. Make sure that the first and final elements of your customer interactions are particularly well engineered because they are going to stick in customers' minds.
2. Set your clocks forward. Modern customers expect faster service than has any generation before them. In this age of the Blackberry, iPhone and Twitter, you might as well not show up if you're going to show up late. A perfect product delivered late equals a defective product.
3. Customers want to connect with a real person - online or off. Instead of a web-based chat window that blandly announces, "You are now chatting with Jane," try, "You are now chatting with Jane Yang-Katzenberg." The customers will treat your "Jane" better, they'll take her advice more seriously and they'll be more likely to want a committed customer relationship with her company.
4. Remember each returning customer. Whatever your business, work to achieve the computer-assisted effectiveness of a beloved bartender, doorman or hairstylist - the kind who would know Bob's preferences, the name of Bob's pet and when Bob visited the shop last. Superb client-tracking systems can create that same "at home" feeling in your customers, regardless of the size and price point of your business and whether it exists online or off.
5. Anticipate a customer's wishes. When a customer's wish is met before the wish has been expressed, it sends the message that you care about the customer as an individual. That cared-for feeling is where you generate the fiercest loyalty.
6. Don't leave the language your team uses up to chance. Develop and rehearse a list of words and expressions that fit your business brand perfectly. For example, the expression "no worries" sounds fine if a clerk at Future Shop says it, but it would be exceedingly off-brand coming from a concierge at the Four Seasons in Milan. Equally important, search out and destroy any words that could hurt customer feelings. For example, your service team should never flat out tell a customer, "You owe us $500."
Instead, they could get across the same meaning much more gently with: "Our records seem to show a balance due of $500."
7. Be patient when filling positions. In a superb service organization, a single disagreeable or unresponsive team member can erode customer loyalty and team morale. This is why it can be better to leave a position unfilled rather than rushing to hire someone unsuitable. More generally speaking, customer excellence is most fully achieved once you become expert at recruiting, selecting, training, evaluating and reinforcing the efforts of service personnel.
