Creating Loyal Growth – Part 2

By Pablo J. Perez, Executive and Corporate Team Coach

Have you ever washed a rental car? This is a question I ask of managers and leaders of traditional businesses or non-for-profits, and 99% of the time the answer is a smile and a “no.” The sense of ownership has a direct link with loyalty, and loyalty has a direct link with business growth. In other words, if your customers and employees are willing to “wash the rental car” (the organization), then the chances of developing sustainable profitability are high.

If the reason for an organization to be in business centers on their customers or the community they serve, in order to achieve organizational success, the leadership team should assume the following critical functions as it relates to their customers:

• Develop a customer-oriented strategy
• Design and implement customer-friendly policies and processes
• Develop employees’ skills
• Monitor and improve processes on the issues that are defined as most important to the customer.

The customer is now the center of the business universe. Everything in the organization should rotate around increasing customer retention and having the right interaction with our customers, with the sole objective of creating loyal growth.

According to Barbara Glanz’s Human Business Model, whether you are serving employees as a leader or a manager or are serving a customer, you always have choices. There are two levels in any interaction that we have:the business level, which is focused on achieving external objectives and goals a specific person has, and the human level, which is all about how people feel during that interaction. Most of the training we have received is focused on creating interactions at a business level, but we have received little training on the human level interaction.

At the human level is where customer loyalty grows. According to the statistics, a 5% increase in customer retention consistently resulted in a 25-100% increase in profits. This unbelievable result is consequence of a powerful force created by the emotional connection to your customers.

Organizations invest a lot of money developing products and services to compete in the marketplace and also design and implement customer service strategies to provide support and generate customer satisfaction. Nowadays, customer satisfaction is synonymous with mediocrity. Using a grading system, satisfaction could easily translate into a “C” on a report card. When customers receive more value than they expected, then the grade rises to an “A,” which always equates to loyal customers.

If we draw the diagram of every Point of Connection that a potential customer has with the organization from before the sale is made to after the delivery of the product or service, we would be able to visualize the total buying process. We need to provide all customers with the level of value and emotional support they expect at every Point of Connection.

Every Point of Connection is an opportunity to connect emotionally with your customer and be sure they are receiving the value as they define it. It is an opportunity to interact at the human level generating the emotional contact that will make them come back and bring their family and friends.

If you are a business owner, or you are leading a business unit or a whole organization, in order to effectively manage Points of Connection; I want to encourage you to follow these steps:

Identify all Points of Connection between your customers and your company.
Once they are identified, you must understand what value your customer is looking for in each Point of Connection.
If there is a gap between the value your customer is expecting and what currently exists, then it is management’s job to put in place proper employee development and process improvement to eliminate the gap.

If you want more information about the three above-mentioned steps to create loyal growth in your business, or you are interested in implementing a customer loyalty strategy for your organization, please call (305) 722-7215, or you may also send me an e-mail at pjperez@activategroupinc.com.

Customer Loyalty: Priceless

By Pablo J Perez, Executive and Corporate Team Coach

Last summer, during a deserved break from my coaching activities, I decided to spend four days with my family at a beautiful resort on the west coast of Florida. The experience was “ok”, except for the speed of the checking-in and out processes, pool services and other services. In a nutshell, overall service was satisfactory but not memorable. If asked, I would relate to the resort that “I was a satisfied customer”.

However, would I stay at this resort in the future? Would I recommend the resort to my family and friends? The answers to both these questions are a resounding “no.” In conclusion, I was a “satisfied” customer but not a “loyal” customer.

According to Jeffrey Gitomer of Customer Satisfation is Worthless: Customer Loyalty is Priceless, “Satisfaction is not longer the acceptable measurement of Customer service success”. The Gallup Organization’s research also concludes that no matter how an organization thinks its customers are satisfied, if it hasn’t made an emotional connection with its customers to develop a long-term relationship, satisfaction will ultimately be worthless.

During my summer experience, there lacked an emotional connection with the resort, resulting in a loss of desire to return to the resort.
Great customer service is all about bringing customers back. And about sending them away happy – happy enough to pass positive feedback about your business along to others, who may then try the product or service you offer for themselves and in their turn become repeat customers.
Customers will come back and will bring family and friends to do business with you, if:
1. The “emotion” experienced at every “point of connection” during the buying process is so strong that it leaves a mark on their memories.
2. The relationship is based on “trust”. Customer will seek your personal assistance, and they are willing to pay for it.
3. They feel you really care about their needs. Always put your Customer’s interests and needs ahead of yours.
Here are some statistics
• A typical dissatisfied customer will tell 6-10 people about the problem. A typical satisfied customer will tell 1-2 people.
• It costs 6 times more to attract a new customer than it does to keep an old one.
• Of those customers who quit, 68% do so because of an attitude of indifference by the company or a specific individual.
• About 7 of 10 complaining customers will do business with you again if you resolve the complaint in their favor.
• If you resolve a complaint on the spot, 95% of customers will do business with you again.

What happens to angry customers?

• 91% of any business's angry customers will never come back.
• 96% will never tell you the reason that they left.
• 80% will do business with you again if their problem was handled quickly and to their satisfaction.

If the problem was quite bad, they will tell stories about it for years and years to come.

"Who is typically to blame when you lose a customer?" Most customer service providers will answer that it is the customer's fault! (and here is the scariest percentage) .. 99% of the time that customer service provider only needs to look in the mirror to see who is truly at fault!”

From a scale of 1-10, how likely are your Customers to recommend your organization to someone else? If your answer is below 7 or you don’t know the answer, it is time to think about developing a Customer Loyalty Strategy to start creating the “emotion” not only on your External Customer but also on the Internal ones (employees).

If you want to learn more details about our Customer Loyalty Development Program and how valuable for your organization it might be, please review our website at www.activategroupinc.com, call Pablo J. Perez at (305)722-7215 or send an e-mail to pjperez@activategroupinc.com.

Reference and excerpts taken with permission from Customer Loyalty by Resource Associates Corporation.