Delivering Value and Customer Loyalty

The next time you patronize a vendor repeatedly think about why you are doing that. Is it because you like the way you were treated by them? Did you receive a special one-time discount or pay a lower price than you expect to?  What about the recognizable value your business receives from the products or services purchased?  Is this what really drives your returning to do business with the same vendor repeatedly?  Indeed, it is. When focusing on building customer loyalty a business must first ensure that they are truly providing identifiable value to their customers. What are the signs that your customers, clients, or patients attribute a high value to what your business is providing to them?

1. They ask about the feature enhancements to your product or service and do not discuss price.

2. They voluntarily provide feedback on how they use your product or service with suggestions for improvements that provide suggestions for high value modifications to your existing offers.

3. They rarely, if ever, comment on or ask for a comparison to a competitor’s offering.

4. They are always inquiring about the release point of the next version of your product or service.

5. They are always happy to refer friends and associates to become aware of your products and services regardless of whether you have an ongoing referral program.

6. They do not request refunds or credits for minor inconveniences due to temporary outages, or slight product or service issues.

7. They do not argue over price increases that accompany substantial improvements to your product or service.

However, if your customers do not reflect the characteristics outlined above then your organization is not establishing consistent loyalty with your revenue generating base.  How can you address this issue, and why is it so critical?  Without a reliable and steadily increasing base of loyal customers your business will ultimately fail. You will continue to pay a higher cost to acquire new customers than making a more reasonable investment to drive retention of your existing accounts higher. Here are some ways that you can incorporate the connection between value and customer loyalty enhancement into your everyday business operations.

1. Ensure that you have a regularly scheduled survey program directed at all customer accounts including a thorough cross functional review of response data followed by a report out process to your whole team.

2. Consider creating a customer advisory board that meets on a scheduled basis with a defined agenda with all meetings attended by different members of your management team. The overall focus of the board should be based on identifying the gaps between expected value and actual product or service performance.

3. Incorporate customer retention metrics into all employee incentive programs.

4. Require all functional leads to highlight and communicate the linkage between their everyday work of their team and customer loyalty, ( hint – if they do not see a connection you need to define it for them and reiterate it to their staff).

5. Include customer loyalty measurement trends and successes in all organizational communications and senior management operational reviews.

6. Create an organization-wide benchmarking program with emphasis on optimizing operational drivers that directly and/or indirectly impact customer loyalty.

7. Make identifiable incremental value improvement the primary element of any product/service enhancement suggestion. Incorporate sharing the product road map with your advisory board as a check for creation of real value.

8. Highlight and publicize all efforts by any member of your team, regardless of their level or time in role, to create recognizable increases to customer value.

When you focus your entire organization on not only sustaining but on always driving additional value to your current and new accounts the resulting loyalty and a notable boost to your entity’s reputation will be the result.  You will begin to recognize your customers exhibiting many of the positive and worthwhile characteristics noted above.  Most importantly, when customers perceive that they are dealing with an organization dedicated to providing enhanced value they will steer more business your way and refer others as well.  They will also become a source of free market research as their relationship to your entity intensifies.  Therefore, striving to support the critical connection between value and customer loyalty is one of the foundational elements to a successful customer retention strategy.