Customer Loyalty: Why it Really Counts

Tracy Borreson on December 11, 2017
  • We all know that customer loyalty is important.
  • We know stats like “it’s 7 times harder to get a new customer than to keep a current one”.
  • We talk the talk–but are we walking the walk?

We all like to talk a big game, it’s human nature. If we know something is important, we make it sound like it’s important to us as well. But we do our customers little justice if all we’re doing is talking about the importance of Customer Loyalty, and we aren’t doing anything about it.

It’s time we all got on the court and did something about improving our customer experience–it’s never too late to start blowing your customers' expectations out of the water. Here are a few things you can hit the ground running with in 2018!

Map Out Your Walk

Now, I’m all for the unplanned walk; you can find some fantastic things. But with a Customer Journey, it’s not quite as beneficial. Since we’ve pre-defined the interaction channels that our customers can use, we need to make sure that we are providing an optimized experience at each one, otherwise we risk customer disappointment. And customer disappointment is the biggest hit we can ever take to Customer Loyalty.

SPLICE has published a variety of posts and webinars related to the Customer Journey; check out our most recent webinar here. You can also find some great information on this process from our partner CX University. We highly recommend a documented Customer Journey as your Map.

One other note I’d like to make when it comes to the Customer Journey is that it is a journey. You are taking your customers where they’d like to go. I like to think about it like writing a novel; at the end of the day, we want our customers to have a happy ending with their purchase. What is the journey we need to take them on to get to that ending? That’s what needs to go into your Customer Journey Map.

Take That Walk

A Customer Journey Map is not a small project; it involves multiple departments, lots of time, AND your customers’ input (in the form of survey results). With this much effort being invested in a program, do you really want to just leave it to the wayside? No! You must take that walk.

There are a variety of other things that distract us from customer experience implementations. Have you experienced any of the following?

  • Ran out of budget
  • Not enough resources
  • Other, more urgent projects taking priority

None of these are uncommon, no matter what industry or business unit you’re in. But we always seem to forget: if we don’t take care of our customers, we have none, and then we have no business. The only secret is to take care of your customers the way you said you would. So, take that walk, and—I promise—it will be A Walk to Remember! (BAM! Cheesy romantic comedy reference!)

Measure Your Walk

How can we tell that we’re walking the walk? Well, it all comes down to your customer data. Your customers are giving you information every day about their level of loyalty, and one of the best ways to track this is with something called an RFM Analysis. What this analysis will tell you is your customers’ Recency (the last time they interacted with you), Frequency (how often they have interacted with you), and their Monetary Value (how much they’ve spent with you over their lifetime).

The analysis places your customers into 5 quintiles: from Best Customers, to those with the least amount of value. This gives you a great opportunity to profile your loyal customers, and use that information to find more! It also allows you to speak to your customers in the correct way, moving those in the 40 and 60 percentiles closer to your Best Customers, and saving some money in your communications with the bottom percentiles. Overall, use your data more strategically to make sure you have an optimized Customer Loyalty program.

In Summary

We’re not talking about anything complicated; I’m sure nothing presented here was conceptually new to you. Where the real difference lies is in the implementation—being on the court with your customers in their journey. I’ve been there (as a B2B company, SPLICE is lucky to work that closely with most of our clients) and I PROMISE that it’s the BEST place to be!

Will you be there in 2018?