Just before Christmas I saw an article on the Econsultancy blog: Loyalty schemes don’t create loyal consumers, says Ipsos MORI. The post was based on research conducted by The Logic Group and Ipsos MORI and suggested that:
- Customer loyalty schemes don’t necessarily drive loyalty;
- That customers want something ‘special’ in exchange for their loyalty, where 71% said that that would entail better offers or services and 48% said that would mean better customer service than other customers.
- But, customers also said that they like ‘free stuff’ and rewards but if presented with a good enough and better offer then they will buy from another business or brand.
So, it seems that most loyalty schemes are reward programmes that don’t necessarily drive loyalty.
So, what does loyalty mean?
In the dictionary, loyalty is:
- the state or quality of being loyal; faithfulness to commitments or obligations.
- faithful adherence to a sovereign, government, leader, cause, etc.
- an example or instance of faithfulness, adherence, or the like: a man with fierce loyalties.
Whereas, Seth Godin in his post Loyalty suggests that:
“Loyal customers understand that there’s almost always something better out there, but they’re not so interested in looking.”
No mention of incentives in either of these.
Let’s not kid ourselves. A reward or ‘bribe’ by another description can and only will last for as long as it is not bettered by another. Just look at the picture above. How many ‘loyalty’ cards do you have in your wallet? Just because you have one in your wallet does that make you loyal? Probably not. I bet it’s got more to do with convenience.
Therefore, if you want to breed real loyalty then give your customers something that is ‘special’ to them as individuals like a better range of services or offers or just better and more personalised service.
Adrian Swinscoe can help you build better relations with your people and your customers that will grow your businesss. To find out more, simply click here.
This is a guest post from Brian Carroll, CEO at Arantech that illustrates what the mobile telecoms companies could be doing to help improve customer retention and a mobile customers experience.
Mobile operators have to cater for a wide range of customers’ needs; everything from high-end users requiring access large amounts of data, to casual users wanting intermittent access to voice and data services. However, one thing that each and every subscriber has in common is that they expect a good level of service from their provider.
Operators are keenly aware of the need to begin shifting their focus away from being network-centric organisations towards becoming more customer-centric. However, the inflexibility of their networks, coupled with the level of subscriber expectation, makes innovation in customer care and management an onerous task. To put this in perspective let’s look at the issues that two mobile subscribers could routinely face in a regular day and how an operator can pro-actively improve those subscribers’ experiences. Firstly, a high-end business user demanding constant access to email and voice services on the move, who we can call Subscriber A, and Subscriber B; a casual, but data-hungry user.
Subscriber A is on a monthly business tariff comprising of inclusive minutes, unlimited texts and extensive data access. More importantly for Subscriber A, he also receives European call and data allowance when abroad and free access to Wi-Fi access points. He requires constant access to email and ubiquitous coverage during peak working hours when travelling. Subscriber A is disgruntled by frequent dropped calls when abroad and high roaming charges when exceeding his inclusive minutes. Dropped calls can be caused by a faulty device or the subscriber moving out of a good coverage area into an area of reduced signal, all of which an operator has visibility of. Furthermore, he is making more calls while abroad than his inclusive minutes allows causing a severe breakdown in the service provider-customer relationship as he is receiving a poor service and being charged more for it. In comparison, Subscriber B is on a personal tariff receiving a small amount of inclusive minutes, unlimited texts and data allowance. Having a smartphone means she is hungry for data; constantly updating social networks, streaming online content and downloading new applications. By accessing vast amounts of data heavy services while on the move she is comprehensively exceeding their data allowance, leading to bill shock at the end of the month.
Both of these scenarios are easily avoidable. By implementing automated Customer Experience Management (CEM) systems that actively monitor and manage subscriber interactions with their network, operators can source the routes of a Subscriber A and Bs’ negative experiences and improve them. For Subscriber A, CEM systems would allow the operator to see that they are far exceeding their monthly Europe zone minutes each month. The operator could then act on this knowledge by offering additional Europe zone minutes for a set price per month to cover off that extra demand. In Subscriber B’s situation an operator can go one step further and break down the usage spike even further. If she is only using up their data usage allowance by constantly accessing and updating social media profiles, the operator can tailor a Social Media bolt-on for a set fee per month that allows them unlimited access to social media networks. This proactivity cements the customer relationship by showing the willingness to improve the subscribers’ experience.
Furthermore, CEM systems can have a positive effect on an end-users experience in the following ways:
- Any potential issues a subscriber faces ‘found and fixed’ immediately and in real-time before it impinges on their experience
- Root and cause analysis of the issue will mean the subscriber will never have the same problem again
- Proactive customer care assistants that are privy to previous call history when a subscriber calls in
- Targeted marketing campaigns based on their preferences leveraged from business intelligence
- Bespoke tariffs and packages to fit with their usage levels leveraged from their individual customer data
A mobile subscriber is happiest when they have to spend less time interacting with their service provider, particularly about negative issues. CEM systems provide operators with a proactive approach in improving each subscriber’s customer experience, making this a distinct possibility.
By Brian Carroll, CEO at Arantech
Given that we are just entering a new year I thought I would give a little reprise to something I wrote just over 12 months ago as I feel that it deserves repeating (The RARE Manifesto: What if….?). Are these the keys to building a business that has customer focus, that is profitable, growing and is a great place to work?
What if we lived in a world where all companies took care of their existing customers as well as new customers, where companies were trusted and liked, where doing business with a company was a good experience, where companies and their employees cared about their customers and each other?
What if we lived in a world where companies with customer focus like that were the rule, instead of the exception? What kind of world would that be?
I believe that it is a world we can achieve, a world worth striving for.
That’s all very well and good, I hear you say. But, where do we start?
Well, let me tell you about a conversation I was having the other day where I was asked the same question.
I was talking to a roomful of business owners about growing their businesses through their customers and better service, and during the presentation we talked about the changing nature of doing business and the number of reasons why customers leave. According to my research, one of the main reasons that customers leave is not due to price and quality issues, but due to poor service or a perceived indifference on the part of the companies to them, i.e., their customers didn’t think they cared enough about doing business with them.
In order to manage this I suggested that businesses should pay more attention to their customers and build better relationships with them if they wanted them to stick around for longer. Simple stuff, right?
Then, someone spoke up and said that while they understood the need for customer focus and the reasons they should be building better relationships with their customers, they didn’t quite get how they could do it. Now, the how would have to depend on a number of factors, including their type of business, their customers, and the sort of relationship that they want to build. But I can say that I believe that if every business was to go back to basics, the ABC’s of building relationships both internally and externally, and operate under some simple basic principles, then I would wager they’d see a marked improvement in service levels and customer retention and loyalty.
Here are some very basic principles that we get taught growing up as children, ones that we often lose sight of when we grow up and enter the world of business.
Those principles are
- Be more courteous/polite towards each other. I think there is truth in the saying “manners maketh the man” and that we all like to treated with courtesy and politeness. Even in the age of the “Me generation,” this type of treatment still stands out. Also, it’d make your Mum proud.
- Give everyone your respect. Whether someone is your customer, a potential customer, a teammate, superior or subordinate, giving someone your respect is one of the highest honors that you can give someone and it can bring out the best in them.
- Do the things that you say you will do when you say you will do them. I think we all like reliability and trustworthiness. Even if that means saying you will call back and you can only do so with bad news, at least the person on the other end of the line knows where they stand. In the absence of information the mind can do funny things and can tend to make stuff up that’s worse than the bad news.
- Be more punctual. This is quite a personal one, but one that I think deserves a mention, as time is one of our most precious resources and seems to be becoming more and more precious. So respecting someone’s time and making sure something happens when it is supposed to can speak volumes about how much you care about and respect the other person’s time.
- Be honest. I believe that most people just want others to be straight with them. Trust us and tell us the truth. Most of the time we can handle it. Even if we can’t handle it or it upsets us, we’ll respect you for being honest with us.
- Be open. Great ideas can come from anywhere and we do our customers, our people, and our- selves a great disservice by not building our businesses on this principle. This is probably one of the hardest principles to put into practice as it can go against many business and corporate control structures, but if you have the courage to pursue a set of relationships that are receptive to new ideas and arguments, it is a great way to build trust and drive creativity, innovation and productivity.
I would argue that each of these on their own cannot be argued against. Put together and implemented I think they become a powerful foundation for better relationships with our people and our customers.
This all sounds too simple, I hear you say.
Perhaps.
But as in life and nature, we know that sometimes the simplest solutions are often the best (Bit like Occam’s Razor).
Is it easy to build this type of culture?
No, not always. It will depend on you as a leader, the business you are in, the relationships that you have with your team and with your customers.
Is it worth it? Definitely!
Just imagine if every business, or maybe just even the ones that care enough to make a difference, made a 1%, 5% or even a 10% improvement in the areas that I mentioned above. Then I believe that would put them head and shoulders above most of their competitors and, at the same time, create great places to work. Just think of the benefits for customer retention, customer loyalty, word of mouth marketing, referrals, employee engagement, retention and your ability to attract the right sort of talent for your business.
And, it may even change the world into a better place.
Last year at this time, I wrote about my Three strategic pillars for 2011. This was inspired by Seth Godin’s post Year in review, Lyn Thain’s post here, and an idea from Chris Brogan about themes. Chriss suggests that what works for him is to pick and focus on 3 themes in your business and life that you want to develop.
In my post (Three strategic pillars for 2011), I stated that my three themes would be:
- Create
- Curate
- Community
What happened ?
Well, let’s look at what has happened over the course of the last year for me to assess how I have done:
- RARE Forum – this was an event that I conceived, curated and created (with the help of a few others) in 2011 (we held the first one in London on November 3rd). The aim was to create a place and event, focused on SMEs across sectors, to share ideas, experiences and to discuss and debate the issues of the day. The theme was ‘Business is Personal’ and if you go to RARE Forum, you can see the ‘story of the day’, filled with tweets, sketches, pictures and slideshows. Finally, the feedback has been awesome and I am busy developing the next one(s) as we build towards developing a real community of like-minded SMEs.
- I think this year has been tough for almost everyone and this year I have been really focused on working with my clients create a set of sustainable and very cost effective strategies, plans and campaigns to help them sustain and grow their businesses. There’s a bit of curation in there too as I leverage a lot of what I see, tweet and write about to help them too. If you are interested in talking to me about how I could work with you and your business, how I do that and what returns you could expect then get in touch here.
- Finally, I’ve also been busy creating a new left-field, start-up project that aims to tackle some of the issues and skills that young people face in their career and education choices. I can’t tell you much more about it right now as we finalise plans in the next month or so and then go out and start raising some funds to build it. Suffice to say that it has create, curate and community at its very heart. Watch this space for more details!
Looking back I would say that my choice of strategic themes have served me really well and have been my guiding lights over the last 12 months.
How do you think I’ve done?
Looking forward, I’ve spent the last few days thinking about what my 3 themes should be and I found myself thinking about new words. That’s where I stumbled a little as I found myself thinking that much of what I had thought about last year still holds for this year. So, I am going to keep two of the words from last year and add one new one. Here they are:
Cultivate
- To develop the new start-up, to nurture RARE Forum, to develop the community thereof and to develop great relations with new clients and even better relations with my existing clients
Curate
- To source new, more and better people to interview for the blog, to curate great content for RARE Forum and to bring all of this to bear for the benefit of my clients.
Create
- To continually create great and interesting content here on the blog (this will be informed by the themes that emerged in my last post: 2011 Rearview Mirror Lessons and Themes: Customer, Service, Business, Experience, Leadership, Marketing, Interviews, Loyalty and Social), to be ever more creative and practical in coming up with strategy and marketing solutions for my clients and to find a way of delivering my projects: RARE Forum and the new start-up such that they deliver on their promise.
So, these will be my three strategic pillars for 2012.
To add a fourth ‘C’ into the mix there is a sense of ‘Continuity’ about them. For me that’s important as it implies that things are yet to be finished.
I have found this exercise to be a really important and useful exercise for me.
What I do know for certain is that over the coming year you and I will be presented with all sorts of new opportunities and ideas many of which will appear very seductive at the time. But, I know that to keep me on track and play to my strengths it has been incredibly useful to have a handful of ‘storylines’ or ‘themes’ that I can use as strategic filters to keep me on track and guide me as I move forward.
It works for me. How about you?
What are going to be your strategic pillars for you and your business for 2012?
It’s that time of year for me where I spend a little time reviewing the past year in particular what has worked, what has proven popular on the blog and what have I learnt..
Why am I telling you all of this. Well, firstly I think it is important to review what we are doing to see what is working and what is not. Secondly, I want to show you how I do it as it as it may prove a useful thing for you to do too and, thirdly, to celebrate some of the content that has really worked out.
My Review
First up I look at the overall themes. To do this I first of took all of the headlines of all the posts and made a word cloud out of them. That way I would get a quick idea of the major themes that I have been writing about over the last year. Not that I don’t do that anyway but given that headlines are so important when it comes to search and attention I thought it would be a useful exercise. You can see the word cloud result below:
What it confirms is that the major themes were:
- Customer(s)
- Service
- Business
- Experience
- Leadership
- Marketing
- Interview
- Loyalty and
- Social
These themes were also confirmed by CustomerThink, where my posts get syndicated to. Over the course of this year, my posts have placed me as a Top 5 author over in the following 2 categories:
- Leadership: Customer-centric strategy, culture and organization alignment through effective measurements and rewards.
- Customer Loyalty: loyalty marketing, rewards programs, emotional vs. rational loyalty, advocacy and measurement approaches.
By the way, if you don’t know about CustomerThink, it is a global online community of business people striving to create profitable customer-centric enterprises. Each month, the site reaches 200,000 subscribers and visitors from 200 countries via email, RSS, LinkedIn and Twitter. CustomerThink currently serves over 80,000 visitors per month.
Next, I looked at the most popular posts in terms which received the most comments and was shared the greatest number of times on Twitter etc.
The popularity of my posts differ when I compare this blog and how my content performs at the CustomerThink site. This, I believe, has a lot to do with the different audiences. However, the most popular post across both sites was:
This was followed (on this site) by:
Out of the nearly 100 posts that I have written over the last year, here are a selection that also proved popular in terms of the number of comments that they received and how many times they were shared:
- Make it easy for your customers to give feedback or offer suggestions
- Giving your customers more choice is a good thing. Or is it?
- Is the customer always right OR you can only please some of the people all of the time?
- Asking for recommendations is great but not like this
- Creating a great place to work is the best business investment decision you could ever make – Interview with Henry Stewart
- Small business, customer loyalty…….there’s an app for that!
- Shackled by the skills crunch, a fish (business) rots from the head down
- Social Media has Revolutionized Customer Service Forever
- Is your marketing both interesting and interested?
- How Consumers Give Feedback
- Is simplicity at the heart of your customer experience?
- Social Objects for Marketing, Engagement & Change
What has this taught me?
- Interviews have been a great way to extend the reach and diversity of the blog, extend my thinking and allowing me to meet some truly wonderful and generous people. This is something that I’ll definitely be continuing in the New Year.
- Headlines are crucial when writing. There are quite a few posts that I have written that have not received the attention that I would have liked. I put a lot of that done to how much I thought about the headline or title of the post.
- What I think is interesting is not always the same as what you think is interesting and this exercise has given me some real insight into what you my readers are interested in.
Is there anything that I have missed or something that you’d like to see more of on the blog?
