Archive for the ‘Customer Loyalty’ Category
Thursday, January 14th, 2010
As a business we help companies adopt and implement customer loyalty as a management strategy, and we help employees inside those companies understand how they impact the success of loyal customer relationships. Therefore, I am acutely aware of service interactions—the good and the bad.
After my early gym routine this morning, I had a window of time to run across the street to the grocery store. It was approximately 7:20 a.m. and my goal was to pick up some necessities for the week. Based on how the store is laid out, my first stop was the deli. As I waited, because there was no one currently staffing the deli, I observed five staff members in the bakery, the produce section, and the floral department taking inventory, stocking produce, rearranging displays, and discussing certain NFL teams and their playoff status based on yesterday’s games. As I stood there patiently waiting to be helped, none of the five folks who could physically see me thought it important to go find someone to fill my deli order. Their priority was stocking and rearranging. After about five minutes a young lady appeared. She did not say good morning, Happy New Year, or make eye contact. She proceeded to put on her sanitary gloves and asked, “What can I get for you?” She filled my order and sent me on my way with a thank you.
The essence of customer loyalty is all about the points of connection—every single touch point your employees have with every customer. In my seven-minute deli experience there were at least 15 points of connection that were missed or poorly executed. Five staff members watched me wait in front of the deli counter and none of them took the time to acknowledge my existence or offer to find someone to assist me. In my opinion, this earns double demerits because they could clearly see I wanted something from the deli and did nothing about it. (10 points of connection missed). The lady working in the floral area took the time to talk with a bread vendor in lieu of offering assistance (1 point missed).
When the young deli worker appeared there was no eye contact and there was no greeting (2 points missed). Her attitude was lackluster at best. She really did not appear pleased to be at work serving a customer (1 point missed). As she was completing my order another customer appeared and her opening line was “What can I get for you?” with no additional pleasantries (another point missed).
Points of connection define the customer experience and determine how a customer rates their service and how they ultimately rate your business. Your business is dead without customers. Adopting customer loyalty as a management strategy is critical to the success of business and industry in our ever-growing service environment. If you want to make a significant difference in the results of your business for 2010, I would strongly encourage you look how customer loyalty is defined in your organization. I am confident that the five staff people watching me wait for assistance are not bad employees and they were genuinely “doing their job.” However, I am also confident store management does not embrace customer loyalty practices or my early morning shopping experience would have been quite different. Unfortunately, my experience with the deli that morning is not my first.
Why do I continue to shop there? It is the closest store to my home and office. However, next closest store is only about 3 miles further and I have decided to break my habit and investigate the other store. If their services prove to be better my current store will lose a 5-year, weekly customer. By my conservative calculations that nets approximately $20,800 worth of business.
Take a serious look at your organization’s customer loyalty standards, practices, and measurements. No business in today’s ever changing economic world can afford to lose a customer because of non-existent or inappropriate points of connection.
Tammy A.S. Kohl is President of Resource Associates Corporation. For over 30 years, RAC has specialized in business and management consulting, strategic planning, leadership development, executive coaching, and youth leadership. For more information visit www.resourceassociatescorp.com or contact RAC directly at 800.799.6227.
Tags: attitude, Customer Loyalty, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Service, management, points of connection
Posted in Customer Loyalty | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
In today’s market, sales teams are getting hammered for more sales.
Companies are looking for ways to conserve cash and increase revenue, and sales departments are caught in the cross hairs. The fundamentals of sales that drive success remain the same and are even more critical when times are economically challenged.
There are some important keys to success in sales, and we have found that most of these key elements apply to any industry, product, or service.
Seek to Build a Relationship Not Just Make a Sale
Making “a” sale is important. But many may argue that is a shortsighted view. Building a positive relationship with a customer and really understanding their business and their specific as well as their ever changing needs will lead to the first of many sales. Look at your current customer base through the lens of customer loyalty. Are you and the rest of your company creating relationships with customers who want to work with and buy from your company alone? The concept of selling through the lens of customer loyalty may take a bit more time up front, but it eliminates a lot of extra work on the back end. Building loyal sales relationships is about you working smarter not harder, all the while exceeding your customers’ expectations and making them want more.
Provide Value Before the Sale as Well as After the Sale
Every interaction with a potential and existing customer should provide value and exceed their expectations. Many sales teams say they believe this but often their behaviors tell a different story. If we know providing value is important, how can a sales person or sales team create a measurable process to make sure that value is received with every interaction? Every sales team may need to look at the concept of a measurable process differently however some examples of knowing that value has been received may include: a thank you note or letter, a verbal thank you due to an unexpected follow-up call or visit, a referral, or a repeat order. Look closely at your process and start measuring these subtleties as they tell you a great deal about the customer’s perception of value within the sales relationship.
Questions Sell, Answers Do Not.
People don’t want to be sold, they want to buy. Therefore the sales process should be about identifying and understanding a clients needs, not about the features and benefits of your products of service. The best way to truly understand a customer’s needs is to ask questions that seek to engage the customer, to uncover his or her real needs, and to understand the benefits of making a buying decision to the organization. How will the organization measure the benefit? As a sales person you will know by the dialog whether you have a solution for their situation and at some point you may spend time explaining why your product or service will achieve the measurable outcomes they are seeking. But most decision makers often don’t care about “the how” (your features and benefits) until you uncover “what” they need and “why” (their need and their measurable outcomes).
Really Listen
The second most important component after asking questions is really listening. Asking questions is not effective unless you really listen to the answers. Being present and really listening for understanding still does not give you the right to get into features and benefits. If your sales dialog typically flows question, answer, explain feature and benefit, you are missing opportunities. Asking questions and really listening gives you permission to ask the next right question. The sales dialog should be about digging as deep as you can to understand the problem, the magnitude of the problem, and why it is important for the problem to get solved. It is only after this deep line of questioning and effective listening that you will get permission to talk about your solution because now in the decision maker’s mind it has direct value to his/her needs. Do yourself a favor and stop losing sale opportunities because you don’t really listen.
Be Proactive Faster and Stay Close
Speed is essential today, and sales are no different. Some folks say timing is everything but I believe having a proactive process in place to stay in close contact with your prospects and customers makes all difference in the world. If you or your department has a process in place, you don’t have to rely on the old adage of “timing is everything,” and being proactive links directly to developing loyal customers. Customers want to know that you are there and that they can count on you. Building that confidence starts in the first step of any sales process. Being there creates trust, and trust is a key component to establishing loyal customers and generating more sales.
Have a Great Attitude and Contagious Sense of Humor
This component is fairly straightforward. Have a great attitude all the time, as attitude is everything! But in addition to having a great attitude, have a sense of humor. I am not suggesting a comedic level of humor but the ability to laugh and make others laugh. Life and business is serious stuff, but that does not mean that we have to take every moment seriously. Life is to short not to enjoy it! “Laughter is a tranquilizer with no side effects.” Arnold Glasgow
Be Authentic
If you are not authentic, you will not be easily trusted, and it is pretty tough to build relationships and loyal customers without trust and authenticity. Be true to your personality, spirit, and character, and use them to your advantage. People want to do business with people who are real.
Often when times are good we forget about these fundamental components for success in sales because sales come easier and faster. “It doesn’t seem that we have to work as hard.” I believe when the business environment becomes more challenging we have a tendency to forget about the fundamentals, and we start combating the symptoms of current times. We wander away from what we know works. To solve the mystery of sales in a tougher economy, stop looking at the symptoms but rather identify the root cause and attack it; and most importantly, never give up on the core component of successful sales.
Tammy A.S. Kohl is President of Resource Associates Corporation. For over 30 years, RAC has specialized in business and management consulting, leadership development, executive coaching, and youth leadership. For more information visit www.resourceassociatescorp.com or contact RAC directly at 800.799.6227.
Posted in Attitudes, Customer Loyalty, Sales | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
In a quest to maintain market position, business leaders are realizing that one of the areas where they can improve profits, as well as market position is by creating a customer-driven organization.
A customer-driven business is one that has recognized that an autocratic, top-down structure must be inverted to put the focus on the customer who is now the driving force. All of the plans and people in your organization need to be focused on the most important person—the customer. Focus is no longer on customer satisfaction. Today’s focus is on exceeding customer expectations as customer service is expected.
Becoming a customer driven business requires the efforts of everyone pulling together with a clear focus on the vision of the organization and the mission at hand, all of which must focus on exceeding customer expectations. Your leadership must ensure that this value is articulated, which helps you create a culture that is solidly entrenched in achievement, continuous improvement, and customer focus. An organization can only survive if customers are satisfied and will thrive only if their customers are delighted which creates customer loyalty.
Create customer loyalty by going the extra mile for your clients. Look not to satisfy them, but to exceed their expectations. Do more than they expect and you will delight them. Word of mouth advertising is still the most powerful advertising available. Delighted customers tell others who, when delighted, will tell others and so on and so on.
Consistency is also important. Many businesses are very accommodating with a new customer, but tend to get lazy as times goes on. They focus on getting new business (which costs five times as much as keeping a customer) instead of revitalizing and improving existing business. As a result, they fail to maintain their service standards with existing customers. Research also shows that 70% of the customers that take their business elsewhere do so because of poor or rude service.
Nothing is more important to an on-going business relationship that honesty and integrity. Live up to and exceed promises made to customers!
Tammy A.S. Kohl is President of Resource Associates Corporation. For over 30 years, RAC has specialized in business and management consulting, leadership development, executive coaching and youth leadership. For more information visit www.resourceassociatescorp.com or contact RAC directly at 800.799.6227.
Tags: Customer Loyalty, driven, exceed, profits
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Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
Holding on to a customer has never been harder.
In today’s ever changing service arena the key to winning customers has nothing to do with price or even product. It’s emotional connection. In the past measuring customer loyalty was a challenge mostly because organizations didn’t understand loyalty. We now know that loyalty is tied to consistent and positive points of connection. Because emotions are perceived as soft, messy, and hard to deal with, emotions make many organizations nervous. Organizations can’t ignore this critical ingredient anymore because the emotional connection with a customer is the basis for creating and building customer relationships.
How can we measure the emotional effect on loyalty? The Gallup Organization suggests using measurements that assess things such as overall brand loyalty, confidence, integrity, pride and passion for the brand. The brand can be the company’s name, its products or services, its people, its policies, etc. Although many of these areas refer to the products or services, connecting with a service provider has a huge impact on the customer’s perception of the brand.
If you want to find out who your loyal customers are, find out how likely they are to recommend your organization to someone else. Remember, one of the key measurements of loyal customers is their desire to recommend your organization. There is a direct and strategic correlation between an organization’s revenue growth and its customer loyalty score.
How does your organization’s measure customer loyalty score?
Tags: Customer Loyalty, measure, poc, points of connection, score
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Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
Have you ever been to a retail store where someone was helping you and then the person disappeared? When you asked someone else to help you and his or her response was, “Is someone else taking care of you?” You answer, “Yes, but he seems to have disappeared.” The response often is, “Well if he is helping you, then I can’t.” You are stranded in the zone of service provider indifference probably getting more frustrated by the minute.
The emotional state of your service provider will always influence the outcome of the service interaction, and emotionally positive points of connection are the best predictor of Customer Loyalty. Have you ever thought about the criteria your customers use to evaluate positive service interactions with your organization? According to Zeithaml, Parasuraman, and Berry from their book, Delivering Quality Service, there are five key areas Customers use to evaluate service.
Reliability. Can Customers depend on the organization to accurately and dependably provide service to them?
Assurance. Do the service providers convey confidence about their product or the service, and do the Customers trust the service provider?
Tangibles. This deals specifically with the appearance of the service area, the store, the lobby etc., and the appearance of the customer service provider. Is the environment pleasing and appropriate, and is the service provider dressed appropriately, smiling, warm and genuinely open? If interacting with customers via the phone obviously smiling, tone of voice, and listening intently will create positive points of connection with Customers.
Empathy. This is the strongest skill that demonstrates if a service provider genuinely cares.
Responsiveness. This involves the ability to provide prompt or timely service, and measure the willingness of the service provider to help Customers.
If points of connections are positive, chances are the Customer will return. If the points of connection really made an impact and provided value to the Customer then there is a much greater chance the person will become a loyal Customer … and loyal Customers positively impact the bottom line!
Do you have processes within your organization that provide you with the ability to monitor and measure every point of connection in your service cycle? If not, start now!
Tags: creating, Customer Loyalty, loyal, measure, measuring, poc, points of connection
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