Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

A personal favourite topic of mine :-)

Customer retention is all about customer satisfaction, if you can satisfy your customers (or even delight them!), then you will probably retain them, so how do we provide this customer satisfaction ?

There is a simple formula that I always use:

Customer Satisfaction = Good Reputation + Good Customer Relationship + Good Service

REPUTATION (Public Relations:

1. Its predominately the responsibility of Public Relations to improve a businesses reputation in the market
2. Customers ask themselves ... do they feel happy buying from a business like yours
3. Is the corporate identity and key corporate messages sending the right signals to the market?

RELATIONSHIP (Communications):

1. Ensuring a great relationship with customers is all about the communications
2. After a major purchase, customers often feel that they have made the wrong choice, that why reassurance messages need to presented often (these can be via face to face meetings, telephone calls, or electronic messages (email, ezines etc))
3. All the customers touchpoints inside the organisation need to be well managed to ensure that customers get a consistent message and level of service.
4. Use marketing budgets wisely, and treat your best customers, never underestimate the power of hospitality

SERVICE:

1. Service is a huge part of customer retentio
The key service elements are pre-sales, sales and post-sales

Pre-Sales

The reputation and friendliness of the pre-sales team
There ability to provide first-class advice and solve customers problems

Sales

Win/Win negotiations (ensure the customer gets something from the negotiations)
Delivery/Supply (on time)
Installation (clean, tidy and working first time)
Invoicing (correct)
Payment (effective systems)

Post-Sales

Good after sales support
Plenty of reassurance
You listen to new development requests

there's a mindset that needs to underpin any customer relationship that's online:

- transparency -

there's nowhere that a company can hide from a customer community - sooner or later the community will find out what's going on, no matter how hard a company tries to hide it.

Instinctively, companies try to hide bad news. That's bad news in itself. Don't do it.

Be open - your customer community will celebrate the openness - it makes them feel valued.

hth

Will Rowan