RISMEDIA, Oct. 19, 2007-Today, companies need to go beyond customer satisfaction to build loyalty and engagement. Allegiance, Inc., a provider of Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) solutions has identified eight ways to increase customer loyalty to help companies keep valuable customers coming back.
“Companies are losing customers at a staggering rate without really hearing from them or understanding why,” said Kyle LaMalfa, Allegiance best practices and loyalty expert. “By identifying what drives customer loyalty and engagement, companies can begin to develop best practices that will have a direct impact on customer retention and profits.”
1. Give Customers What They Expect: Companies need to first identify and understand customer expectations, then provide value for the dollars spent in terms of product quality and service. This is fundamental.
2. Turn Complaints into Opportunities: Quickly resolve customer complaints to build loyalty and show them you care. Monitor things like time to resolution and customer satisfaction levels once complaints are resolved.
3. Engage Customers in a Two-Way Dialogue: Gather feedback consistently from multiple sources, respond to feedback quickly and personally, then organize feedback to track results.
4. Build Opportunities for Repeat Business: Monitor what customers request most and offer services that complement other purchases. Use technology to track, classify and categorize open-ended feedback.
5. Survey Customers and Solicit Feedback: Use short surveys that are unbiased and well structured. Employ random sampling to avoid survey fatigue.
6. Create a Centralized System for Managing Feedback: Technology can help to centralize surveys and customer feedback and track both qualitative and quantitative information.
7. Tie Customer Loyalty and Engagement to Business Outcomes: Track customer feedback over time and compare with revenues and profits over that same period. Determine how outcome should be measured, whether by satisfaction, likelihood to purchase again, likelihood to recommend, or other factors.
8. Use Analysis to Predict Future Loyalty: Analyze information to reveal the most important area of focus for customer loyalty and how it changes over time. Use feedback data to understand client intentions and motivations.
For more information, visit http://www.allegiance.com .
