Did it work. I am not sure, but talking to other people it looks like in many ways my school did pretty well.

I cam across an article in the May issue of CRM (I know I am way behind) about reaching for excellent customer experieinces. There was a great quiz from a book called Excellence Every Day.

Here is the quiz, rate each of these statements on a 1-5 scale:

Total up your score and continue after the break...

Here is the scoring model. How did you do? What changes can you make to increase your score? How can you help your company put the customers first? What can you do to make a bigger impact? Look for a post from me on customer service in the coming days -- hope you enjoyed the quiz!

But what if we used the power of the internet to do all of this? All you do is log on, select the card, customize it if you wish and click send.  The rest is all done for you. That is exactly what a great new company called Send Out Cards will do for you. They have over 8,000 different cards to choose from, organized so that they are easy to find.

Try this link from a marketer to get your freebies on his dime (hey, he offered...). All you have to do is go to http://www.sendoutcards.com/az and click on the big red button in the middle. 

SIDEBAR: Loyalty from the Inside Out

If your employees aren't loyal, it's hard to imagine your customers will be. Dianne Durkin, president and founder of consultancy The Loyalty Factor, says younger employees are notorious for job-swapping -- and, as with customers, it's far more costly to acquire and train a new employee than it is to retain an existing one. It's imperative that a company hire people who fit its culture, and invest in the "little things" that will entice them to stay.

"The two most underutilized words in the English language are 'thank you,'" Durkin says. Forget high salaries and bonuses; employees really want appreciation and recognition. Whether it's a simple "Good job!" or a handwritten note placed on a desk -- no emails! -- the personal touch makes employees feel not only relevant but important.

Given today's high turnover rate, employers need to understand what does contribute to employee loyalty. Durkin ranks the top factors, in order of descending importance:

• Vision and purpose: Make sure employees have a solid grasp of company direction and what they contribute to the corporation.
• A learning environment: Provide an opportunity for growth and responsibility. People have a short attention span; they'll be more likely to stay if they're challenged with new and interesting projects.
• A fun environment: The workplace has to be an enjoyable space to interact with others. Staffers will treat each other (and customers!) better.
• Modern technology: Employees using advanced technology outside of work expect the same at work.
• A good salary: People need adequate compensation for the work they're doing, but it's not foremost among their concerns.

Southwest Airlines is one of the few airlines to make it to the top of the consumer-loyalty list, in part because its employees are extremely happy as well. When Durkin asked why they choose to stay, employees responded, "Because this is a company that loves us back." Passengers, in turn, say humorous crews and in-flight games make Southwest a joy to fly. "If you're a businessperson on one of these flights," she says, "don't plan on doing any business." (She means that in a good way.)

Some firms have even embarked on rewards programs for employees. Points can be awarded to recognize achievement or as a display of gratitude, and can be redeemed for rewards at the company store. Before launching any programs, Durkin suggests asking these essential questions: What is the level of pride and commitment in the firm? What are the firm's top three strengths? What are its top three areas of development? What do you personally need to increase your productivity and efficiency? What is the one message you'd give to your firm's leader? Those answers will help develop the appropriate programs that will drive employee -- and then customer -- loyalty.

Really great observations. I think for growing and emerging companies, since customer (and revenue) acquisition is so critical, there is less time for planning for employee growth and retention. Let's look at these accounts below on the interview processes at Google and Microsoft. As we hear, Google is the best place to work ever, with free food, laundry, commuter buses from all over the Bay Area, and a comprehensive set of other benefits.

Post 1, "Back to Microsoft," covers a senior engineers decision to rejoin the Microsoft team because he wanted a more defined career path to a meaningful management career. And in this other post, a European engineer talks about interviews at Microsoft and Google. The decision was a no at both organizations, but his criticism of the Google process was that it was a bit immature. Each candidate was interviewed as if they had zero experience, and would join as a junior employee. This offers a fresh start in some ways, but can be insulting if you feel your prior experience is a valuable contribution to the team.

Going back to the sidebar, the things that increase employee loyalty are largely free or inexpensive.  All it takes is putting the employee first. And when the employees feel rewarded and treated well, they will do the same to your customers. At the end of the day, isn't that what we want? More happy customers?

Investing in happy employees looks like a wise investment to me.

In your company what do you do to serve your customers needs to the fullest? Give some examples that work for you! Do you have a separate department to look after Customer Service?

It's a daring move, but well worth the effort.

A recent story in Business Week presents this rather unique approach to building trust and credibility with your customers and prospects. Most recently used by online personal financial services companies, it's an amazingly valuable way for CEO's and others to hear the voice of the customer for themselves. All it takes is an hour a week, and a dedicated phone line.

By spending time on the phones (or reading e-mails if phone work isn't possible), senior executives have access to some pretty valuable data — how customers see you or your products, the experience they have with your company and the things that are important to them. This may, or may not be the messages you share in your advertising. Over time, you'll get a fabulously accurate picture of your customer — a profile thats realistic and timely. Beyond this, your employees get the message that quality service is important enough for everyone, even the big guys, to make time for it.

What's more, the experience you give to the customers (or prospective ones) you speak with is invaluable. Whether you make an immediate sale or not, the goodwill and buzz you generate is worth its weight in gold. You leave callers with a memorable, hopefully positive, experience. By listening to customers questions or complaints, your get the chance to share your expertise and willingness to meet their needs. In the case discussed in the article, the focus is on providing the best service, not necessarily the most expensive one. the focus is on service and relationships — not profit and loss.

In a tight economy, remember how much repeat business can do for you. By taking the time to listen to your customers you'll be in a great position to earn just that. And maybe just a little bit more.

History reports that when Michelangelo was asked how he came to master his skill in sculpting, he answered that when he worked on his statues, he didn’t chisel away at the marble to carve out the life-like figures, so much as remove the stone that was covering up the figure trapped inside.

Whether we chose to believe the story or not – it comes to punctuate the essential quality of a successful retention program. That of creating a balanced harmony that seeks to free customers to make their choices based on deeper level desires to partner with the brand for its innate benefits rather than a reliance on some “forced” bind.

In the coming installments I hope to review some of the critical facets of customer retention. As always, this is a personal journey that I undertake for my own self indulgence/enlightenment and so I am thrilled (and amazed) that you have found this post amongst the billions of web pages. I hope you enjoy your stay and find some value.

Part 1: Retention is the new Acquisition

All businesses love to see previous customers return to purchase their products or services again and again. Repeat customers are beneficial to the success of your company because they . . .

*Cost less to attract than new consumers

*Are easier to attract than new consumers

*Will recommend your company to others

*Require less service

An excellent way to keep previous customers repeat customers is through a frequency-marketing program. Frequency marketing is any form of marketing that rewards customers for their purchases and encourages them to return. Frequent flyer miles illustrate this concept in the clearest of terms. Many airline companies offer frequent flyer miles, which motivate the consumer to continue flying with that airline in order to obtain cheaper services.

Any company can utilize frequency marketing for its customers. Some magazines or newspapers offer deals for resubscribing to their publication in order to keep the consumer a frequent buyer and reader. The make up store Sephora has Beauty Insider Rewards, which also benefit returning customers. The program keeps track of purchases, and at the $100 spending mark, the customer receives a free gift. The rewards restart after the $100 mark, and the free gifts keep coming whenever that mark is reached.

Creating a solid relationship with customers is very important and should be done at the earliest stage possible during sales. Customer maintenance insures their happiness and repetitive sales.

What have your experiances been? Have you had similar experiences?

Survey’s are a win-win: keep your company name in front of your customer and get valuable feedback.  The easiest (and least expensive way) to survey your customers is to email them. Offer them something in return. If you sell hats or tee shirts with your logo on it, offer participants a tee shirt in exchange for taking the survey. Or, if you're in retail, offer 10% off their next purchase.

Customer Service and the level one gives is driven from the top down. Senior Management ( or the President) must ensure that all aspects of the business are driven by the need to provide the ultimate in Customer Service.

Then why in most companies is Customer Service the responsability  of the Sales Director. At the end of the month the President is looking for sales results not improved customer service. So why do we say Customer Service is most important if it never is given the priority it derserves? 

What you need to ask yourself is why "you" return to a site? Either it contains a product you require more than once or it engages and interacts with you.

The crucial element is content, and what I mean by content is valid useful information that focuses on the needs of the end user. This is why we come back. It's for all of those neat self gratifying elements that can affect even the smallest component of the users day. The downloadable recipes and the timely weather reports before a picnic. It's really not about how your company started or how long you have been around. While this is useful information to determine the validity of your company and showcase a strong foundation it's just not going to make someone return to your site.

So while it's "your" site and "your" image make sure to think about the people who you want to visit your site and what they want. If you only pay attention to what you want, you may find the internet a very lonely place indeed!

- Scott

Statistical credit score-cards serve up as a better alternative to the traditional judgmental methods of risk appraisal when a bank is making a decision whether to lend to a customer or give him a credit card or not. Risk Scorecards combine historical loan default data with the demographic and transaction details to arrive at a risk score for an applicant. Statistical techniques are applied to data on existing customers to generate equations that can accurately distinguish good customers (customers who repay on time) from bad customers (customers who don't repay on time or don't repay at all). This equation or scorecard is used to score new applicants. Statistical scorecards lend themselves to automation. From the consumer's point of view this ensures quick turnaround time in the evaluation process as well as total consistency, eliminating any bias, which may be present in a human analyst.

Another instance of analytics in banking and where results are apparent almost instantaneously is cross-selling. Banks are leveraging their existing databases of customers more judiciously to rope in customers for lending products like credit cards and loans. Since banks are sitting on wealth of information like liability transaction which sets the base for response models predicting their response to another marketing offer. The cross sell models throw up interesting triggers about the customer setting the stage for life-cycle based marketing or event based marketing. Already, close to 70% of credit cards portfolios of most banks are sourced through cross-sell from their own bank account customers.

One crucial fallout of analytics based marketing campaigns is the tremendous cost savings accomplished by the bank by restricting its soliciting efforts to the customers who are predicted to be active rather than widening its efforts onto the entire customer base and incurring huge costs there. Using customer segmentation solutions, a bank can get 1.5 times more eventual customers to a particular offer while actually contacting a much narrower customer base.

Nowhere else the effect of analytics based marketing is more apparent than in the credit cards companies where analytics have become a way of life. In a fiercely competed battle for wallet share where an average credit card holder holds 3 to 4 credit cards and free credit cards have become the norm, getting a credit card customer to spend on your credit card and ensuring that he sticks to your credit card. Analytics based customer marketing and value management solutions will help you to design optimal customer development strategies, maximize your customer’s profitability by widening the relationship across different banking products and optimize existing customer relationships.

Customer Segmentation strategies which help a portfolio manager to know smaller cohesive groups sitting within his larger customer base, understanding their transaction patterns and hence preempting his requirements goes a long way towards customizing campaigns, offers linked to campaigns and even the tone of the communication directed towards the customers.

It's a well known fact that commercial broadcasters the world over are struggling the reap the rewards they once did from advertisers, in fact these days the profit margin is getting very narrow indeed.

That's why many broadcasters are trying new techniques like themed ad slots and dedicated single product commercial breaks.  UK broadcast Channel 4 have gone one step further however, for tonight at 8:10pm they have teamed up with Honda to run their first ever live commercial.

It features sky divers jumping out of an aircraft attempting to form the word Honda in under 3 minutes 20 seconds.  If they compete the task it will be exciting for the viewers, if they don't complete the task it will also be exciting for the viewers.  If the viewers tune in, which they are being encouraged to do it will be a win-win.

Channel 4 are making big claims though about it being the first live TV adverts, whereas the slightly more skeptical of us may be thinking back to the days of the 1950's TV studio ads where all TV was live and the only way to advertise a product was to feature it in the studio with the presenter.

No one has ever tried to perform such a stunt as skydiving live in an advert though, so hats off to them for that one.

Are you going to be watching tonight?  

or if we've gone forwards in time...

Did you watch it?  Did you tune in specially?

Be Reliable

Can your customers depend on you enough to fulfill your commitments and keep your promises? Consistency with whomever you deal with will be very ensuring in a world inundated with unexpected events. This will put them at ease, bring their wall down (if I may), and will build their trust with you.

Be Competent

Show that you do know what you are doing. Not in an arrogant way of course. Find ways of improving your quality of service so that customers will come back again and again. One way of finding out is to ask them. Go ahead and do it, you are being different and it shows them you do value them.

Build Rapport

Every one you meet that can be a potential client, remember their names. Repeat it to yourself 3, 4,5,6,7 times or more if you have too. The sweetest thing to a person’s ears is their name. After you remember their name invest time in getting to know them. People love talking about themselves. It’s very pleasing to them. Remember simple things like their favorite products, food, movies, and etc. If you seem genuinely interested in them, they will become interested in you.

Are you Vulnerable?

Are you willing to admit when you have made a mistake? People are very willing to forgive if you admit your mistakes. People love to hear about your flaws and how you plan on resolving them. It demonstrates accountability. People will trust you more if you demonstrate to them that you accept responsibility for anything done incorrectly rather than blame it on something else.

Loyalty

Are you loyal to your customers? Will you do what is right for the client, even if your profit margin will be affected? If you do, then you are treating customers with great respect and regard and they will appreciate it. If that doesn’t get you fans then I don’t know what will

Conclusion

Customers need to feel like the business care about them. Before they care, you have to show you care, and then they will become fans. These tips should help your clients become raving fans and help you build your business.

Customer loyalty can save you money in your business because instead of spending advertisement dollars on getting new clients. Customer retention gives you repeat business and they may generate word of mouth. Who would object to free and effective advertisement?

The main reason why we don’t retain our customers

The customer doesn’t think you care about them and/or they feel they don’t matter to you. Once they feel like this it is very difficult to win them back. Try as best as you can to keep your customers happy while they are your customers to prevent them from feeling like you don’t care. Then try harder. Every effort counts.

Tips to make your customers wanting more

·         Thank you notes thanking them for your business. Please hand write it to give it the personal feeling. It can go a long way.

·         Follow up call to make sure everything is ok. Just like they do in a restaurant.

·         Remember something personal about your clients. Birthdays are always good to remember and send them a birthday card. The key thing to do is REMEMBER.

·         Deliver your product with an unexpected gift.

·         Send information to prior notice of new products, and upcoming sales

·         Send cards. Anniversary, birthdays, or any other dates that is relevant to your clients.

·         Deliver on time. If there is a problem with the delivery inform your customers. Then explain how you will solve it. In business you can’t afford to have problems without solutions. And then follow up with them to make sure everything turned out ok.

·         Depending on the product. Follow up with a call to offer another product or refill.

Conclusion

Make these tips are part of way you do business. Remember the 80/20 rule and keep your customers coming back for more. Comments are welcomed.

Adapted from www.actioncoach.com

1. telecommunications
2. ISPs
3. finance
4. travel & hospitality
5. online retail
6. insurance & utilities 

ARE THEY STILL A CUSTOMER?  It shouldn't be too hard to figure out if a customer is still yours.  You have a few metrics in place, and you start looking for trends.  You can look for changes in attitudes, as these are often a leading indicator of behavior.  Look at customer survey data for those who score low.  While high satisfaction scores don't correlate well with customer retention/loyalty, low satisfaction scores do correlate well with customer defection.

It's best to concentrate on customer behavior data for the real insights.  A few that have served me well in the past include:

• Changes in RFM (recency, frequency, monetary) patterns
• Customer service usage - frequency of contact, number of complaints, satisfaction with result of contact.
• Product or service usage - changes in usage patterns, using most recent version, contract renewals, service usage vs. payment (using much less than what one is paying for may indicate pending defection)

Companies spend signficant dollars on acqusition, yet for many, customer churn rates remain high.  There may be some customers you no longer wish to keep.  That's fine, but you need to know how to identify the ones to keep and the ones to "let go," and the metrics above will help. 

WHAT'S MORE PAINFUL?  The study also found that "almost one third of Australians would rather go to the dentist for a tooth extraction than suffer a poor customer experience!"  Either they have some wonderful dentists in Australia, or really poor customer service...

photo credit

Data Analytics have proven to be a very useful tool for the retailers because of enormous amount of data available for analysis. Customer Analytics has emerged as a new field helping firms in customer acquisition, customer retention, customer segmentation and customer value management. With the help of predictive analytics, analytics service providers have been able to predict customer behavior and thus help retailers to understand their customers.

Analytics service providers such as Fractal Analytics have specifically designed a suit of solutions for Retail industry through its Retail Analytics Toolkit which help them in various aspects such as customer analysis, sales strategy, pricing strategy and brand promotion. They provide retailers customer loyalty analytics (to help retailers improve customer acquisition and retain right customers), Merchandise Analytics (to manage efficiently inventory and stock), Performance Analysis (to analyze sales performance and devise optimized sales strategy), and Marketing ROI Analytics (to optimize marketing spend and pricing strategy).

My telcos are cheating on me. Like amped-up coffee-shop uncles with pockets full of Power 1 Walnut, they're lavishing gifts on fresh, new faces and hoping that the faithful spouse at home doesn't notice. After all, as long as they remember our anniversary I shouldn't mind, right?

It started with my mobile phone operator, M1. They sent me a letter last week to offer to cut my monthly subscription from $26 to $16. But only if I locked myself into the relationship for another 2 years.

That's lovely, but what exactly are you telling me M1? If it was a loyalty bonus or a thank you gift for being a great customer, then why not just give me the discount with no strings attached? I'm exactly the kind of customer you should be rewarding. I'm faithful and monogamous, I pay my bills on time and I've been giving you kopi money for 6 years already.

What's wrong with me M1? Is it the frumpy house-dress? Would you lavish more attention on me if I dressed in a Tiger Beer uniform and flirted more?

As we say (often) in Singapore... "nevermind already". Just when I'd got over my mobile phone company lavishing attention on fresh, pretty faces when they should have been lavishing it on me, my broadband company did the same.

My cable provider, Starhub, began running ads on the weekend for free mobile broadband with their home plan. For no extra cost, they've throwing in a little portable laptop modem and unlimited mobile surfing.

"I love it when a company I use surprises and delights me with great products and services", I thought to myself, excited at the idea of whipping out my laptop in the supermarket and checking my shopping list on Remember the Milk.

Foolish me. Blinded in my role as the faithful spouse I failed to notice their indiscretions until I got to the small-print.

"Offer applies only to new customers, or existing customers whose contract has expired".

So once again as an existing customer, under contract and dutifully ponying up on time every month, I've been shafted (... or not shafted because my shaftor has gone off flirting with someone else, if you want to keep with the coffee-shop uncle analogy).

Does anyone else think there's something wrong with this approach to marketing?

Pic: Nostalgia Phone Home by creativespark

The conclusion is fairly obvious - it's worth the time and effort to retain existing customers.

Greeting cards are an easy and inexpensive way to remain in touch with your existing clients.  The most common reason for losing customers is that they forget about you.  A card every couple of months just to keep in touch will keep you at "top of mind" with all your customers and will pay for itself over and over again.

Customer acquisition solutions like response modeling, campaign analytics and segmentation rank order prospects and identify population clusters that are most likely to respond product campaigns. Through the use of predictive models, test and learn frameworks, and tracking mechanisms businesses can support a multitude of tailored offers that not only enhance market share but also successfully reduce acquisition costs.

Research shows that acquiring a new customer can be 7 to 8 times more expensive that retaining an existing customer. Also since customer acquisition costs are very high, customer retention and customer value management are very important in domains like credit cards industry, insurance industry and retail.

Predictive analytics provides the power to assign the likelihood of attrition to existing customers. Industries can then identify the profitable customers amongst those that have a high likelihood of attrition and implement programs to proactively retain these valuable customers. Proactive identification of likely attriters combined with proactive retention programs can add millions by way of incremental customer revenue.

Fractal Analytics, an analytics outsourcing firm based in India has deployed several CRM analytics solutions particularly for customer acquisition, attrition management, customer retention, customer value management and customer segmentation for clients in verticals like banks, insurance firms, retail and CPG.

Related Links:

• Customer Analytics – CRM Analytics
• Use of data analytics in consumer finance companies
• Consumer Finance: Predictive Analytics for competitive advantage
• CRM Analytics in Retail
• Customer Retention Strategies in Insurance Industry

CRM analytics comprises all programming that analyzes data about an enterprise's customers and presents it so that better and quicker business decisions can be made. CRM analytics can be considered a form of online analytical processing and may employ data mining. As Web sites have added a new and often faster way to interact with customers, the opportunity and the need to turn data collected about customers into useful information has become generally apparent. As a result, a number of software companies have developed products that do customer data analysis.

CRM analytics can provide customer segmentation groupings, response modeling, attrition modeling, loyalty analytics, cross-sell modeling and RFM analysis. Data collection and analysis are viewed as a continuing and iterative process and ideally over time business decisions are refined based on feedback from earlier analysis and consequent decisions.

Companies like Fractal Analytics have lead their clients to have a better productive customer relations in terms of sales and service and improve in supply chain management (lower inventory and speedier delivery) and thus lower costs and more competitive pricing.

For more information:

• CRM Analytics
• Customer Acquisition Analytics for Insurance Vertical
• Customer Analytics in Retail
• Retailing- The age of customer intelligence
• Customer Value Management with Cross-Sell Models

I have a loan officer who does not live in Grand Rapids, who sends me direct mail once a month. For awhile I opened the letters thinking that there was something of value in the mailings, but now I don’t even open the letters.

OK, here is the good thing about her Marketing efforts; she is always top of mind. She has helped me purchase two homes and I would definitely use her again. Not because of the mailings but because I trust her. The bad thing is that I throw away her mailings as soon as I get them without opening them. The truth is I throw away a lot of “Junk Mail” all the time.

On the other hand, I get a ton email from all sorts of people I do not know or trust. But every now and then I get caught by an email that compels me to open it.

So, one hand someone I trust sends me something I don’t read and someone I do not know sends me an email I read. Why the difference?

First, like everyone in this technology age I, like all of you, have been conditioned to tune out a lot of information that screams, “BUY ME” unless it is relevant to your current needs and interests. “Snail Mail” comes in a sealed envelope and makes it easy just to discard it.  Whereas email gives you the option to quickly preview before making a discard decision.

Here is an example of an email that caught my attention. It was from a company that I did not know but they had a compelling subject that enticed me to look and within the first 3 seconds the email grabbed my attention and I kept reading.

 
Not only did I read the email but I actually called them, sat through a demo and will definitely start using and recommending their services.

Now please keep in mind that I am not bashing, at all, direct mail campaigns. They have their place but here are a few tips. If you are going to send out a direct mailing make sure it is infrequent and that it has something a value to me related to your products or services. You should use your customer database to ensure the mailings are personalized to each customer’s interest. Even mom and pop shops can do this inexpensively using mail merge. And please do not send letters to someone who does not know you.

On the other hand email marketing campaigns are different, but only slightly. Here are a few tips
1. You can send me (the consumer) an email if I do not know you, but don’t act like you know me. That is a trust breaker. If our relationship starts on a lie how can I ever trust you again?

2. The subject should be an arousing “pick up line”. Why do I want to interact with you?

3. If you have not figured this out yet let me state it again. Don’t try to sell me something. Inform me and educate me.

4. Make your message engaging and create brand awareness. That is why I like OnMarketer, they give you the ability to brand your email without fat attachments and providing links back to your website. And guess what? It makes it trackable.

5. Don’t spam me!!!!! As a consumer I am ok with regular emails from you, especially if they are informative and engaging. But don’t spam me, stalk me, make me Wanna Put Your Number On The Call Block Have AOL  Make My emails Stop. (oops sorry to break into Destiny’s Child.)

Anyway there are other things that you can do to create compelling email messages that will get consumers to read them and I would be glad to help you out with more advices, but I must be getting punchy if I am breaking into song. So this should do get you by for now.

Byte or get bitten