In any customer-facing industry, we know that loyal customers are key to business success. If you’re not convinced then take a look at research from Gartner: 80% of a company’s revenue comes from 20% of its customers – the loyal ones. However, how do you create this loyalty when businesses are challenged daily by how to develop loyalty and ensure redemption? It's a fine art! Great companies find ways to tune into customers’ voices every day, and then take action on what they have learnt. Acting on feedback continuously ‘closes the loop’ between what the brand promises and the experience delivered. Businesses should not under-estimate the value of meeting customers’ basic expectations but equally, we should also not ignore the financial benefits of exceeding them. By keeping the customer at the heart of your business, you can deliver an experience so good that it changes their economic behaviour.

So, how can businesses ensure they are keeping customers at the heart of what they do?

  • Keep it personal

Businesses can become so inward-looking and focused on analysing data that they stop hearing the real voices of their customers. It is essential to personalise the communication you have with individual customers and to a take their feedback on board as an action point for the business.

  • Celebrate success

Your front line should be empowered to do the right thing for the customer; encourage them to take the initiative and be commended on results and feedback. Some companies we work with have a commission structure built around their individual customer feedback, which can be a great driver and incentive for staff to do the best that they can and excel in the service that they deliver.

  • Create change with feedback

If you have customer engagement software, exploit it! Bring visibility to the customer journey by using measurement tools to track feedback, analyse and progress. A good starting point can be to measure what matters most to customers in the transactional experience, as this will have the most influence. Improvement goals for each customer’s journey can be shared with the team to align their goals.

  • Bring the customer into the boardroom

It can be easy for the customer to slip out of mind when the executive team are focusing on growing the business, so keeping them visible in the boardroom helps the whole business to understand how important customer experience is to the bottom line. By surrounding your team with the voice of your customers highlighting great feedback, as well as areas for improvement, enables you to keep the customer at the forefront of your business.

  • Fix stuff, for good

Focus your team on solving the customer’s query the first time. Remember that customers like to help themselves - if the customer can solve their query using a dedicated help centre it’s usually quicker, and will lead to higher satisfaction. Agree with your team what the top ten customer complaints are, so you can then set about fixing them once and for all, saving time and effort for both customers and customer service agents.

Ultimately, whilst customers do not expect the brands they deal with to be perfect 100% of the time, by striving to deliver a great customer experience and quickly putting it right when you don’t, you can change the economic behaviour of your customers and therefore your business results.

 

By Dennis Fois, CEO of Rant & Rave. 

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