Customer Loyalty

How do you go about finding what your customers loyalty drivers are?
According to the e-Loyalty Resource site, you could start with the following questions :

Q1. Which product / service features most often make your customer repurchase or recommend your products / services? Its important that loyalty be defined in terms of repurchase, recommendations or active participation in a customer program--it's not just about satisfaction.

Q2. What is the decision/buying process? In other words, what factors, attributes, personal situations, etc. come into play when deciding to repurchase or recommend?

Q3. What makes a customer consider or not consider another brand or buy your product / service despite its higher price? The best source for these answers are your most loyal customers. Ask your best customers why it is they don't consider other brands, or if considered, why they continue to be loyal to you. Remember, if you design for your average customer, you’ll be just that---average!

Q4. How do your customers feel about your management or your company? Do they think you are a leader or are the best in the industry? Do they want to be associated with your company because it makes them look or feel better? Do they think you care about your customers and are responsive to customers? Determining what actions make your customer feel like you care about them is tough, but critical.

Other Resources:

  • This article talks about the various factors - especially relationship based ones.
  • In this article, Bob Hayes delves into ways of identifying your customers' loyalty drivers.
  • An Oracle Siebel CRM white paper on customer loyalty.
  • A case study from Royal Bank of Canada.
  • Kenneth Wallace in his article explains that all businesses are in the C.A.R. business, i.e., Creating Awesome or Awful Relationships & provides his view of the main drivers of customer loyalty.

1 comment:

  1. This week I attended the Conference Board's Customer Loyalty show. It's nice to see that loyalty strategy has moved beyond rewards cards and into a strategic customer initiative with bottom-line impact.

    The companies I saw speak (Christie's and Sony) both discussed how important it was to track the Voice of the Customer. They both conduct lots of surveys and ask customers to record verbatims that they can analyze.

    At Christie's, they had always just asked their top few customers, but when they opened it up to a more representative sample of customers, they received a lot more insight. So while it's important to talk to loyal customers first, a customer who isn't loyal yet but could be is also someone you should definitely learn from.

    Liz Glagowski
    Managing Editor, 1to1 Media
    www.1to1media.com/weblog

    ReplyDelete