When one considers the reality of what keeps customers coming back, it doesn’t require a PHD in psychology for the average business person to comprehend what keeps customers coming back. To boil it all down, scrape away the superfluous minutia and forego the eons of training in mindless dribble, it’s amazingly simple. We’re going to cover what we believe to be the three principles of customer loyalty that have endured time.
Please don’t confuse customer loyalty with customer satisfaction as they are distinctly separate issues. Loyalty is earned where customer satisfaction simply means that you didn’t screw things up to the point of driving your customer away. When someone is satisfied, they may or may not be back. On the other hand, when you have customer loyalty, not only do they return but often times, they bring their friends with them.
In the opening paragraph, we dissed the wisdom of academic understanding, not out of disrespect but because there’s a natural tendency to over analyze any subject regardless of what it is. Engineers are notorious for doing just that. When it comes to the customer behavior, we believe basic human instinct trumps all the academic analysis.
Case in point: When you find a good place to eat are you more motivated by price or comfort? We’re defining comfort as feeling good about how you are treated or serviced not the room temperature. If you answered the latter, we would argue that when you become comfortable with whatever environment you are in, that environment may become habit forming. What are the odds that you will return to a place that you are uncomfortable with? Pretty low probably.
Yes, we know this is a dramatic over simplification of a very complex issue but we felt it necessary to do a Knute Rockne on you. To paraphrase a quote Knute made famous, “the essence of football is about blocking, tackling and execution” which illustrates his focus on the fundamentals of the game as opposed to the playbook. The correlation we’re attempting to make for your business is about the basic necessity to remain focused on the fundamentals of your business.
What are the business fundamentals we’re espousing?
We believe that there are three principle objectives that help cultivate customer loyalty and they are:
- · Good Products
- · Good Prices
- · Good Service
We’re going to delve into those in a moment but first, we acknowledge that by utilizing the preface of “good” you might believe that we are promoting a shallow form of mediocrity with these terms. While we are not suggesting the adhorrent adoption of average business practices, we are however are encouraging you to simply change your customer reference point. We have all been cultured and conditioned to be the very best or great at what we do. We subscribe to that belief as well with one exception and that being how to control the “good-to-great” emotion.
Think about a great automobile, a Lamborghini maybe? Who wouldn’t want one? You might be surprised at the answer as well as the reasons people would shy away from the Holy Grail of autos. Forget about the financial responsibilities and think about the average person raising a family. What you come up with is someone who has a pragmatic approach to his or her own lifestyle. In other words, the Lambo might be a great car at a great discount but it is irrelevant to a retail sales manager with 3 young kids at home. So if you want to offer the sales manager a great deal on a new car, then offer something that is budget practical, family friendly and a good value for all parties involved. Notice we said “good value” not great. Bottom line, do not allow your personal goals of achievement to obscure your vision with your customer. Nuff Said.
Good Products
First and foremost, you must have a good product to start with. Contrary to popular opinion, you do not need to have that Lamborghini to offer if your typical customers are thinking more along the lines of a Toyota Avalon. By the same token, for that same customer, it also wouldn’t pay to offer them a huge discount if they were to take a high end used sports car either. In other words, it isn’t necessary for you to be offering the top of the line in your industry. That’s always relevant to the target customer you are dealing with but we think you get the drift.
What you need is something of quality and value to the customer that they have an interest in. It’s a crime that some businesses are always pushing the envelope in terms of products and have established objectives that dictate their sales team to upsell ad nauseum. The ultimate focus is strictly monetary based with the objective being to achieve a lofty status among their peers and competitors. The customer was the last real priority and that is a travesty.
Good Prices
This is a highly subjective phrase and will have different meanings to different people. Suffice it to say that for the sake of this discussion, it simply means that whatever it is that you’re selling, it is a fair and modest price in the marketplace. The price is always relative to what ever it is that you’re selling. A factory made stained glass window offered at a national retailer can’t be priced in comparison to a custom hand-made stain glass window for a church.
The key point here is that you don’t have to have the lowest nor do you want the top end price for your products or services. Here we go again, being in a good position on price works for the average consumer and encourages them to return for more good deals.
Good Service
Speaking of Holy Grail’s earlier; great customer service should be it for any business. Ah ha, we used “great” didn’t we? Remember the context we referenced it in, as in the “top enchilada” or “highest achievement” which is a noble pursuit but a formula for failure if you’re not realistic about the objective.
How about offering really good service to begin with and use “great” as a goal to pursue. Remember the old phrase, “crawl before you walk”? Fundamentals dear Watson, fundamentals. Most businesses you ask will tell you they practice really good or great service delivery to customers. Do they really? It has been our experience that this is more lip service than application.
Whether you are an employee, manager or a business owner, you should take a step back and genuinely think about how you are actually doing in the arena of service. Ask your friends and family members what they honestly think of your business service. You can do customer survey’s on paper or even use online tools like SurveyGizmo. Another way of finding out for the skilled professional is to indirectly probe your customers for feedback. If you ask the right question and then shut up, you may hear more than you expected.
While your competitor may carry the same products at the same prices, they simply cannot be you or your business. Cloning still isn’t an option yet either. Good service is the single most important element that you have absolute control over. It is the one thing that can separate you from others in the pack. It also just happens to be the one characteristic we humans are looking for to make us comfortable.
Good Products, Good Prices and Good Service
It is our belief that success and failure in business can be measured by your achievements or lack of with these three principles. In other words, if you fail in two or more categories, you might be in trouble. Conversely, if you do any combination of two of these well, you can do okay. If you can achieve all three objectives your business will probably thrive. If you have good products and prices and can offer great service, you will help define your own path to success.
You have heard it said a million times before, listen to your customer and they will tell you what they want. More importantly, if you can give them what they want and make a profit doing so, they will almost always be back.
No comments:
Post a Comment