You only have to look at one of the biggest business triumphs of the digital age – Amazon – to understand how Jeff Bezos’s passion for customer service powered his company from the top down. It shines out of him. It’s why he’s responsible for one of the most phenomenally successful growth businesses on the planet.
Amazon offers great delivery and returns options. The entire reason of the business is to give great customer service. And then there’s Amazon Prime, the icing on the cake that captures customer satisfaction and transforms it into customer loyalty.
“Everybody is responsible for customer loyalty”, explains Tim-Peniston Bird, Founder & CEO of Orangutan, leaders in strategy, reward and technology for businesses. ““But the responsibility sits at the top down. From a SME to a global company, customer loyalty needs to be a prime driver of every CEO and Director. Why wouldn’t it be, when customer satisfaction is the most important thing that determines whether a business grows or not.”
Can you convert customer satisfaction to customer loyalty?
Like we’ve seen with the Amazon example, customer satisfaction goes a long way. But it’s not the be all and end all. With the amount of choice available nowadays, customer’s heads are easily turned by competitors offering added values extras.
So, a loyalty scheme is a powerful tool for converting satisfied customers into loyal fans, giving them good reasons to stick with what they’re happy with instead of being lured away by the devil they don’t know.
But many businesses aren’t confident about approaching customers to offer incentives and rewards. Or they want to offer rewards, but don’t know what.
They’re also concerned about the time, money and resources involved in setting up and maintaining a customer loyalty scheme.
Does a customer loyalty scheme represent good value for money?
The thought of the technology, the time, the investment and the ongoing delivery of a customer loyalty scheme can be daunting. But the process is much less of a time and money suck than you might initially expect with the help of a leading-edge loyalty scheme provider.
Implementation of a customer loyalty scheme is a change proposition to help you proactively find reasons to retain customers.
Done badly it can have disastrous results. Done well it can deliver 47-900% sales increase and return 20-40 times the cost of funding the scheme.
Conclusion
Loyalty programmes need to be approached strategically. You need to be clear about the problem a programme needs to solve and work to the psychology of your audience. Our mission is to create extraordinary long term growth for extraordinary companies
Tim Peniston-Bird Founder & CEO, Orangutan
Is driving customer loyalty on your agenda? Contact Tim Peniston-Bird at tim@orangutan.co.uk or on 08456441122
