The customer is always right. I’m sure you’ve heard that a million times, but it’s mostly true. If you want to grow your customer base, you need to ask the opinion of the people who are buying your product or service.
4 Key Questions to Increase Customer Loyalty
There are many ways to go about getting customer feedback, but it’s important to include 4 key questions to increase customers. Sandra Yancey, Founder and CEO of eWomenNetwork, coaches all of her SOAR clients using the fundamentals of her SOARing Six P’s:
People
Priorities
Plate
Product
Processes
Performance
Each one of her SOARing six is the underpinning of any successful business, including hers. In the video above, Sandra explains one of the most important components of measuring your performance, which is boiled down to asking your customers 4 key questions:
How do your customers feel about you?
How do they rate your product or service?
Do they value their overall experience with your company?
Will they purchase from you again?
Treat Your Customer Like They’re the Boss
Who’s the boss of you? Your customer! How would you treat your boss? With kit gloves.
ClientHeartBeat.com gives the following advice on how to treat your customer like they’re in charge:
Thank all your customers for their business
Go out your way to help customers
Try to impress your customers as if you want a pay raise
Think about your paycheck every time you talk to a customer
Keep your promises and integrity
The 3 C’s of Building Customer Loyalty
As sales expert and author, Jeffrey Gitomer says,”Customer satisfaction is worthless. Customer loyalty is priceless.” It’s one thing to get clients. It’s another thing to keep them coming back. McKinsey & Company, a business and leadership global consulting firm, surveyed 27 thousand American consumers and found 3 things they all had in common when it came to retaining customers: Consistency, Consistency, Consistency.
Going deeper than that. McKinsey found the following 3 areas of consistency that mattered most to customers:
- Customer-Journey Consistency: Consistency throughout the customer’s journey in the times each comes in contact with your company is “30 percent more predictive of overall customer satisfaction than measuring happiness for each individual interaction.”
- Emotional Consistency: “One of the most illuminating results of our survey was that positive customer-experience emotions—encompassed in a feeling of trust—were the biggest drivers of satisfaction and loyalty in a majority of industries surveyed.”
- Communication Consistency: “A company’s brand is driven by more than the combination of promises made and promises kept. What’s also critical is ensuring customers recognize the delivery of those promises, which requires proactively shaping communications and key messages that consistently highlight delivery as well as themes.”
Dollars and “Sense”
Another important and vital measurement of performance is simply dollars and cents. Sandra presses upon all of her clients and people she mentors that you need to know your numbers. That’s a mistake that a lot of women business owners make. They don’t know their own balance sheet. It’s simply a case of dollars and “sense.” It’s also important to have an accountant to manage that for you. As Sandra says, “You need to focus only on the things that make the cash register ring.” Creating a long-lasting, consistent and trusting relationship with your customer is on you.
Curator of Game-Changing ContentPhyllis SmithContent Manager, eWomenNetwork
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