How likely are you to encourage a friend or family member to apply for a job here?

This application is for an employee survey that included a few other questions to qualify how well the company was doing to create an environment that made people excited to work there. There are many examples of how the question can be used in both internal and external applications to gauge the success of your retention.

How likely are you to talk to your family about your experience here?

We’ve used this variation in a case of an experiential purchase, like a theme park, where the experience was catered to a general consumer level. The question targets a specific core referral group, so we can gather specific referral metrics to the one group, rather than opening it to friends and colleagues. The client wanted to focus on family referrals only. Overall, it’s a good example of how you can target direct referral sources with your question.

How satisfied are you with your experience at company X?

This approach works for a combination of products and services delivered by the company in question. It rates the overall experience. Our follow up question identifies some of the reasons or areas that lead up to the score. The follow up question needs to increased in relevance the more generalized the initial question becomes.

How likely are you to return to Company X for your next product or purchase?

A typical deviation on the question focuses on the product purchased from the company, used when a company might have multiple product offerings and need to articulate each product’s delivery success, or NPS. This is very important when you have a combination of new and old products in service with a customer or client to make sure you are getting the focused feedback you are looking for. You could ask this question in the feedback loops, but we prefer in some cases to ask right away.

On scale of 0-10, rate your impression of Company X’s service to this point.

This method can be used in a multi-stage approach to customer data collection when the purchase cycle has not been completed to gather first impressions and perceptions of the company. Asking the question later on in the purchase cycle can give you some comparative results.

Overall the question can give you some real benchmark data to work with in your customer experience or customer retention efforts. If you are looking to overhaul your customer retention or customer experience process, review our customer retention consulting offerings. We’ve helped many companies develop strong retention programs and survey models for success.

As a consumer, when you sign up for a new loyalty program you have a set of expectations. Those expectations come from the current experiences already embedded within the company, and whatever new expectations are set with the program. The program typically details both what the company is willing to do for your loyalty, and what loyalty actually looks like to the customer. The problem? Many times a loyalty program simply rewards customers for what they are already doing and does not set new expectations for what loyal behavior looks like! If the customer is loyal that is great, but when a customer is not a loyal customer and gets the same rewards, it can be fatal.

The points program failure.

You buy things, you get points. This is a very simple way to abstract loyalty purchases to a larger pool of rewards. But does everyone who walks in the door get those points? If so, there is a critical problem with this approach. Your loyalty program is being put in the place of a loyalty creator, which it was not designed to do. Loyalty programs are measurement and reward tools for the loyal. When you try to use your loyalty program to gain loyal customers, you put your program in a position of being applicable to every customer new or old, and rewarding them based on that. How is that separating the loyal from the infrequent? How does that create exclusivity? How does that enhance your relationship with the customer? The reality is that it is no longer a loyalty program, it’s a coupon strategy.

Loyalty programs reward for behavior of a defined status of loyal. If you don’t know what loyalty is for your business, how can you understand how to reward customers who fit that profile? In our retention strategy work, we’ve helped customers like Real Networks and Sunoptics, understand what a loyal customer looks like. And from there, we can take that data, and create a loyalty program that fits the profile of a loyal customer. The big mistake is not defining and expecting loyalty from your customers in your program.

You might ask, why can’t you just give loyalty points or card to every customer? The real cost of this approach is what you are willing to give in return. We’ll cover why in our next post. Subscribe to our blog to stay on top of our posts.

First, be unique.

A loyalty program that relies on points and plastic cards can get lost in the shuffle. Your loyalty program, just like any marketing or advertising should be relevant and engaging. A brewery that does engraved mugs instead of loyalty cards is a great example of how your program can be relevant to your company’s offering. And the program should engage your customers in a way that not only pushes promotions, but opens up the dialog and shopping experience to engage in a deeper, more meaningful interaction. Focusing on the “Why” of your company is a great way to instill deeper value and loyalty. Loyalty programs, are not loyalty creators. They just allow you to measure the activity. Your messaging and efforts behind the program are what create loyal customers.

Make it measurable

If you do anything with a loyalty program, you should have the ability to collect lifecycle metrics on each of your customers. At the end of the day, if you can not calcualte LTV, or sales inside your loyalty program, you are wasting time. Every interaction and sales that customer makes should be tied into your program. Loyalty program are one of the greatest cohorts a company might ever have of measuring customer return. There are a number of tools that give you reporting, but at the high-level, you need to be able to pull demonstrate the active return in referrals, LTV, NPS, and return ratio on reach measures.

Do more than discounts

Loyal customers are created on more than price. In fact, loyal customers are the ones who are most likely to not care about price in selecting a service.  So why make the carrot on the end of your loyalty stick a discount? You can explore some feedback here, but in most cases the intention is to build value, and you can do that by giving more, not taking away. Find ways to increase what you give to customers, not just take away from your profits. Think outside your box. Even if you sell tires, it does not mean that a gift card to a restaurant would be a irrelevant reward. In the pursuit of being memorable and unique, your rewards can be a big help.

Creating a loyalty program for any industry starts with the intention of making more with every interaction and understanding your customer in more meaningful ways. With a successful loyalty program, its a win-win for both the customer and the company.

The most difficult result of setting rewards in a loyalty or retention program, is that many times the initial trajectory is one of loss.  Many loyalty programs think of discounts as rewards. This topic is explored in detail in our post, Never Discount Your Product, but here we must focus on the expectation that a discounting approach it sets. Discounts lower the expectation of value to your service or product. This is one of the difficult battles between value pricing and market pricing. If you are forced into market based pricing (i.e. commodity), retention is going to be harder to manage because price becomes a major driver for purchase and repeat purchase. Discounts have to be a component of your marketing strategy and advertising strategy, because everyone else is doing it and a lower cost keeps you competitive for new client acquisition. If you were in a value based pricing, you would never set an expectation for discounts, since your “reward” would shot your value in the foot. Ferraris never go on sale. There is a reason for that. Only when price is part of the purchase decision do discounts become prevalent.

The smarter marketer would really think through this process before using discounts as rewards. Are you setting the stage for greater loss by discounting? Once you set a discount, pulling back from that discount almost be impossible until you’ve made the migration to a value in the customer’s mind. Does your discount reward set the stage for engaging the customer on a value that no competitor can match? It should or it’s poorly set.

Set expectations you can meet successfully, without doubt.

This should be a very obvious note, but one worth mentioning.  Whatever reward you set for your retention efforts, or in general, make sure you have 100% accountability and fulfillment figured out before offering it. There are case studies of rewards that were fulfilled poorly, or in bad timing. Make sure your system is executing to the expectation  you set. The last thing you want to do is fail to met the own expectation you set.

Failing to met expectations

When you do fail, see it as an opportunity. Assume the customer is lost, and consider what you can do for your reputation. What do you want the last interaction with your customer to have in his mind? That they failed to deliver on a free bee, or they were out of stock of the item on sale, or your product or service was poor. This customer can leave your store with two different messages and you are in control of that choice. Doing what ever you can to go beyond the customer’s expectations of issue resolution should be your goal. When the customer talks to his friends and colleagues, what is the story you want him to tell? I would think it would be one of unmatched customer focus that takes the attention off your failure and resolves the issue clearly.

Rewards outside of expectations

One our favorite ways to reward customers is outside of expectations you’ve set. Customers who get points for every purchase, expect them with each purchase. In this expectation, the reward has a zero sum on customer experience.  Consider this; have you received points just for being a great customer? You don’t have any expectations for that, so it would be viewed as a general surprise and exceed your expectations wouldn’t it? Expectations play a major part in how valuable rewards actually are to your customers. If you can find ways to reward outside of expectations, you will exceed expectations creating a positive value for your customer. And the great thing about these rewards is that the expectation for the reward to happen again is very low and you’ve raised the bar for a brief moment in time with out creating new expectations.

1. Find a way to reward longevity.

Think of something new and innovative to give your customer on their anniversary every year. If you have personalized data about the user, use that to customize the gift or promotion.

2. Increase personalization.

Having an application that allows users to increasingly personalize it for their company or personality is a winning strategy for long term adoption. Many applications we have seen only allow personalization in the upper tiers of the subscription model. We think this is a poorly thought out strategy. Personalization is a key driver of adoption in many organizations and personalities. And even though the application may not have functional personalization, it can have aesthetic or visual customizations that allow the users to feel more at home. Dashboards are a great way to allow customization into your application in small bits. Included in this should be continued orientation into the other features of the application that the user has not accessed yet.

3. Let them connect on more channels.

A recent study shows that customers want more ways to communicate with their service providers. How many channels are available for your app? Is there a mobile app? What about a concierge voice service or TXT interface? Remember when twitter was a TXT tool? Make sure you can provide your service, or respond to needs on as many channels as possible to enrich your users’ experiences. It’s availability that really wins with channels. Make your application data, or at least customer service available on as many channels as possible. Not sure which channels to grow into? It might be time for a customer survey.

What we are presenting below is the hundred-dollar loyalty campaign that reviews some of the best practices on how you can get a loyalty program up and running for a small retail operation. This might not make sense for your business, and that is OK. If that is the case, you should be working with someone like New North, to help design a program that makes sense for your customer and appeals to the real reason they shop with you. For those of you that see the light at the end of the tunnel with what we present here, we encourage you to take what you can below and give it a go!

Setup

The campaign we are going to set up here is going to be a punch card campaign with email promotions. So first you will have to setup your punch card and set up an email account to be your list management tool.

Mailchimp still offers a free email account for lists less than 2000 people, so it’s a logical option for someone just starting out. Create the account and set up your list to include information like First Name, Last Name, Email, Address, # of Cards, Last Card. The last two fields are for you to note how many punch cards they have completed, and when the last card you entered was. You’ll be entering all this information by hand and these two points will help you see cycle time, and deeper indications of loyalty in multiple card use.

Mailchimp Account : Free

For the punch card, you’ll want to create a simple design for a business card using any online printer. Shops like 123print.com offer online design applications so you can create your punch card and everything online for free.  So the front of your card should have X punch slots, your company name, Website and the basic clause of your program. “Buy ten coffees, get one free”.  On the back of your card, you should have the details and disclaimers (this can be in small type) and a place for the customer to write their name, email and address. Note: Make sure that is not in the same place the punches will go!

1000 Loyalty Cards: 85.00

Execution

Make the cards freely available and hand them out to anyone who purchases your products and tell them about the program. Make sure you have a custom punch or symbol you use so to lessen the spoofing of your cards. A note on spoofing: Let it go. If you sense a crisp clean punch card (real cards will look beat up) that has all ten spots punched, just talk to the patron. Thank them for coming back in so often. Ask their name, get to know them. The free coffee is worth getting to know one of your customers in more detail who may become an advocate. Plus they won’t have the opportunity to do it again per your record keeping.

Custom Punch: 15.00

When a patron does have the card completed, require them to fill out the information (name, email, etc) on the back to receive the offer. Be sure to write the date on the card yourself. Put it into a safe place to reconcile later. If you have time, you can pull up your email database, and see if they are already a customer or check for spoofing as well.

Marketing

Email will be your best bet for marketing your campaign freely. What you’ll have in your email system is a database of loyal customers, who have completed at least one punch card. Your job at this point is to encourage them to spread the word. Send them promotions that make sense for them to share. New customer promotions, or group discounts are great in this case.  But before you get too carried away, a couple of ground rules. One, do not email more than once a week. Why? read here. Two, keep on message. Say what you are offering and be done. This is not the place for photos of your new employee, or pets. Three, be gracious. These are loyal customers. You don’t need to sell them on coming back to your store. Thank them, and give them something special that shows how special they are.

Conclusion and Next Steps

So there you have it. A quick introduction into how you can start up and launch a punch card loyalty program for less than $100. There is so much more to be said, but this basic program can be the starting point for a much more meaningful interaction with your customers. Take the opportunities you have now to grow with your customers into a loyal relationship.

Once you have this program off the ground and you are ready to really address loyalty as a key metric in your business development, contact us for a free consultation on how we can help you take loyalty to the next level with more automation, loyalty program management, and reaching deeper into retention and loyal communications.

Gut Reaction

Customer retention starts before your customer leaves. Sending a “we’re sorry your leaving email” that was never prompted by other triggered messages or insights is a waste of time. Of course you are sorry, you just lost money. If you were sorry, you would have done something about it earlier.

Discount to Death

We’ve written about discounting and coupons, and how they will kill your business if not done correctly. Don’t “offer” your customers when they are leaving. Its just another way for them to devalue your service, since now you are trying to give it away.

Impersonal

Your messages are impersonal. People are smart and can sense a form mail, or mail merge on an email template. You need to go beyond their name to make real impact. Purchase history, or details about their life with your company will always drive relevance to your messages.

To Little To Late

If you are automating your messages, make sure you are using predictive, not just responsive triggers. You cannot always assume when the customer has made the decision to leave. So you need to make sure you are covering a wide array of triggers so you can get them before they make the emotional and mental decision to leave.

You Don’t Give Them Options

Your customers are constantly working to see how your product or service fits into their lifestyle or needs. At some point, your offering might not be the match it once was, and they will be forced to make a decision. Having other options available for your product or service would be a good way to move them to a better fit, rather than loose them altogether.

Both Custom and Pre-Built Content Management Systems (CMS) offer similar programmatic benefits with no real limitations, so for most businesses, budget is the key factor in deciding between the two. As we explore the two approaches, what we are really establishing is which one will most likely get the job done with a smaller budget based on your needs.

Application or Not

The first consideration is whether you are going to have a custom application on your Website. If your Website does need some custom functionality, using a custom CMS might be a better choice. With a packaged CMS, your developer will have to follow the existing protocols and architecture when building your custom application which takes more time than building something without architectural limitations. The custom CMS would not be limited by the rules of the packaged CMS, allowing the developer to build around the content of your Website. Pre-built CMS solutions have lots of plug-ins that can extend functionality, but if what you are looking for is new to the internet, a custom solution may be a better direction in the long term.

Users

Users refers to those who will manage the CMS, and the two main factors to consider are the number of users and their skill levels. Each CMS will handle users and roles differently. If you have a multi-tiered organization with a very descriptive work flow process, a custom CMS might be a better solution. A pre-built CMS already has in place roles for its users, and some vary on how much customization you can do. This could very well force your workflow to wrap around the software, rather than the other way around. A custom CMS is going to allow the users and roles to be built around your existing workflow and approval process, which will provide clarity and understanding to those users already in the workflow. This would speed adoption and acceptance of the new Website.

The second part of this factor is the “savvy” of your users. If users are not Web “savvy”, each system will have its advantages. Training will be needed in either case once the CMS is ready for live production data. The benefit of a custom CMS, would be a customization of the taxonomy or labels that would help those users identify actions and data using the language they are already familiar with. For example, if you’ve been publishing “press releases”, you’d want the button to say “press release” inside the CMS, instead of “Posts”. A pre-built CMS by default has pre-determined names for all the buttons and functions. A packaged CMS would also use words such as “themes”, “modules”, or “plug-ins” that may seem strange or disorienting to your user base. Keeping the interface labels familiar to your users could be a major factor in the success of the site.

Updates

The updating of the code base is a significant difference between the two choices. Having a custom CMS means that the CMS is built once, and built for your specific solution. Rarely, and surely not for free, will the code base of the CMS be updated. You will have to pay your developer to update the CMS if you want new functions or abilities. Pre-built CMS are continually updated through community development, providing new features, options, plug-ins, and themes. This allows the CMS to become a more refined piece of work and most updates are completely free.

Hopefully this brief article has helped you understand some of the major considerations for choosing a CMS. There are many other options to consider for each project, but keep these three in mind as you make your decisions.

While you can’t control when your customer is going to need you next, you do have control over your retention campaign, and it should be executed with seriousness and attention to detail – as though each interaction with your customer might be your last. Let’s look at some of the tactics that any auto dealership could implement to keep customers engaged and coming back.

Understand Your Customers

Knowing your customers beyond their vehicle is the first critical step to creating a retention program. Anyone in the sales or marketing function understands relationship building both socially and professionally. The more you know about your customer, the more you can do to keep them. Think about it. The customers that have been with you the longest are the ones that have interacted with you the most in a positive manner and value your relationship. Start looking at your customer list and fill in the blanks with surveys or through conversations with customer service representatives. Do they have kids? Where are they in their career? Do they own a new home, or are they looking to buy? Many life decisions have a financial impact. We call these events “triggers”. These social triggers as well as the technical triggers associated with regular maintenance, give you a deep pool of data to work with to engage with your customer.

An Ounce of Prevention

Knowing how to anticipate “triggers” is a critical aspect of retention. Once you fill in the blanks for your customer list, it’s time to start thinking about why customers leave you. Typically they do it after an unsatisfying interaction, or before their next purchase. In the first instance, the focus should be on improving customer service and creating positive interactions. But the latter of the two is more important. When they prepare to make the next purchase, do you have enough equity with them to be involved in that decision? Anticipating, offering, and reassuring them in their the next purchase decision is going to be paramount for your retention process. Your competition comes into play as well if they offer a compelling product that competes with yours. Stay ahead of them with what you have, which is open communication with your customer and a better knowledge of who they are.

Meet Their Needs

Once you have an idea of what events or triggers are coming up in your customers’ lives,  you can start to understand and reach out to them with effective messages that meet their needs, or help them in these times of transition. The level of detail here is completely dependent on your data. For example, if you know if your customers are expecting children, you might be able to start a conversation on a new vehicle to better accommodate. If you know they take a regular vacation every year, it might be a good time to bring them in for maintenance before the trip. Once started on this exercise our clients have no trouble creating message points that would be relevant to triggers in their customers lives. The key is to identify the triggers, create a plan, and execute it. The execution could come in the form of emails, phone calls, direct mail, or social media. It’s all about communicating with them on their terms with messages that resonate.

Measure

After your plan is in action, keep records of all the events and messages you send out. We are advocates of measuring every piece of marketing to evaluate its success. Retention plans should be the same way. Keeping a log, or updating your contact list with new triggers is a great way to stay on top of your investment in the campaign and allows you to see real results. Take special care to track referrals, as that is great way to really serve the customers that promote you. Your goal should be to know something more about your customer every time they come into your dealership. You can invest in the relationship for stronger retention and trust.

In Conclusion

You have a limited window to retain your customers and the key is developing an understanding of your customers as individuals. Technology can help you keep track, but acquiring the information is most important. If you need help setting up a retention or loyalty program at your dealership, contact us today for a free phone consultation at 240.575.5887.

The following approaches are not tactics that we suggest as general approaches to growing the right customer base. For good insight into creating a winning retention program and positioning to help grow loyal customers, check out our posts on Retention Campaigns, 3 Must Haves of Customer Retention, and Three Steps to Improving Your Customer Retention. These items below can “stop the bleeding” of customer churn while you evaluate your overall strategy.

Mine Your Customer Data, Look For The Pattern

The #1 thing you have to know in any customer retention program is the fault points, or why the customer leaves. A behavioral or product based cycle should be apparent if you are digging deep enough. If you have a customer churn model setup, you already have a head start. If you don’t, you have to have some idea of why your customers are churning before you can stop it. A loose hypothesis is better than none, so start with what you know. It’s best to engage with only the customers you need to engage with in these tactics. These are expensive tactics and they will engage the customer for one or two more cycles. You will need to find the real reason they are leaving and address that as soon as possible to have long terms impacts on retention.

1. Engage in Offers

This tactic has to be done with exacting standards. We are not advocates of discounting products, but understand there is a time and place for everything. If you need more time to figure out what the issue might be for your product or service, extend that service at a lower, or no cost to your customer. You might even be in the position to acknowledge the issue and put a promise into play along with the offer.

2. Put Promises in Play

This is one of the hardest tactics to execute well. If you honestly address the issue which is causing the churn, you can let your customer know what you are doing to address this problem. If it is a feature that is lacking, new competitive products, or poor quality of the product, you have a starting point. With this approach, you are not hiding behind the wall of a “perfect” product. Engage in a dialog about what you are doing to address the problem directly. You’ll address the issue before the customer has to act on it themselves, or at least delay them.

3. Involve The Customer

The best way to curb a sliding customer sentiment is to give them an outlet. A customer survey that is designed to gain more information around your hypothesis can lead you to real change and retention. You might even be able to incentivize the issue by giving them a free month of service, or dramatic discount to complete the survey to accomplish two of these tactics at the same time. But make sure you follow a survey program if you send one so you don’t further alienate your customer in the conversation.

Remember, these tactics will only buy time while you step back and really address your churn issues. There is no silver bullet to stopping a customer from leaving your company, there are only tactics to extend the process in emergencies. A proper diagnosis and addressing the problem can lead you to a stronger customer base and lower churn.