Different but similar to reducing churn, promoting loyalty in your customers is most often a business concern…so what can Sales and Marketing do to help?

Sales Vanishes

One of the key problems is that in a lot of cases the sales person…well they make the sale and then they pass on that customer to the account manager or similar. All too often the only other time that sales person will get involved is when something has gone wrong and they are sent to try and patch things up.

Your sales person normally has a relationship with that customer and could still be a useful voice in the conversation, whether that’s carrying out those customer feedback sessions we talked about in the last lesson, or as part of that account holder team.

Top Customers

Many of your top paying customers may have been wined and dined by your sales people (all while carefully playing by ant-bribery laws of course) and yet when they sign up as customer, do you keep doing this? A little bit f extra care and attention can go a long way , especially when it’s out of the blue and not just as an apology when something has gone wrong.

Consistent Brand

If you want to promote loyalty then it’s important to hit your customers over the head with who you are and what you are doing for them! I’m always amazed by the sheer lack of consistency in many organisations. Most of the time this seems to be to promote different services or just because the marketing team gets up looking at the same shade of blue. Although different products aimed at different segments may require a different approach, there needs to be an overall brand that is instantly recognisable.

Loyalty Schemes

Common place in b2c, the more your customers use you, the more they get a little something back. I’m not honestly sure how much of an extra difference these schemes make in some cases. With many items once you are into a daily routine you have more or less captured that customer. Once someone starts getting a coffee every morning it’s unlikely they will stop so I’m never convinced that giving them the occasional free extra will make a huge difference, other than that a happy customer is never a bad thing. If you have the sort of product/service that will only be used intermittently then a loyalty scheme might have a much bigger impact.

Ultimately the loyalty of your customers is determined by your ability to do what you say you will as a business and no amount of clever marketing or sales will counteract that.