One key element of marketing and adding value to your company is to keep your customers satisfied and to make them a fan of your product or service. When customers have a vested interest in your company they will return the favour.
You may ask, what favour can a customer do for me? My response to that is that they can promote your product or service to their network and all at a very low cost. How often have you had a friend who has said, “I need a new mobile phone. What kind do you have?” Now if you answer with “I have this brand but I’m not happy with it.” Then this is normally the end of the conversation. However, if you answer with “I have this brand and I really like it.” Then that friend will often ask a whole bunch of questions about the phone.
To most it would seem like a pretty logical step, keep the customer happy and they will keep coming back. Despite this logic, only 7% of customers reported in the Global Customer Service Survey that the customer service they are receiving is exceeding their expectations.
This means then that there are a massive 93% of customers out there just waiting for the right company to come along and blow their socks off with excellent customer service.
One idea here is to look at your customers. An example could be to look at the gaps in their customer service pre and post sales.
You may have noticed that I mentioned pre and post sales in the last paragraph. The reason for this is that delighting your customers is not something that you should only do when drawing in that potential customer but is something that you should always do in keeping that customer.
One study has shown that companies need to spend approximately 6 or 7 times more revenue to attract new customers in comparison to keeping those current ones happy. Therefore it makes sense to spend that little bit on retaining your current customers. In the end, you have done so much work trying to get those new customers, why should you let them walk away again?
I’m not advocating that you shouldn’t spend money on finding new customers, I am however advocating that you should spend money on both. That way while you are locating and attracting new customers, your fans can also promote and sell your brand for you.
