Customer - Top Tips - Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty

This document is designed as a quick reference guide to Customer Loyalty.

This will enable you to gain knowledge of a particular skill, task or process.

This means you can quickly find the key information that you need and refer to it on an ongoing basis whenever you need to refresh your knowledge.

Introduction

The way in which a customer feels about the service they have received will influence whether or not they choose to return to the store in the future. Our customer vision is that “we exist to improve our customers games” and create customer loyalty.

Customer - Top Tips - Customer Loyalty

What you need to know

To understand how we generate customer loyalty we can use the customer loyalty pyramid. Understanding each step of the pyramid and where your customer may be on it can help ensure that we deliver world class service to 100% of our customers, 100% of the time.

The pyramid has seven levels and with as all pyramids we start at the bottom:

Customer - Top Tips - Customer Loyalty

What you need to know

1. Suspect - at this point the individual may not know or be interested in a product. This is where external factors such as TV advertising, press PR are used to heighten awareness and draw customers into our stores.

1. Prospect - having positively engaged the customer by the external factors, the individual becomes a prospect. They are interested in the product or the proposition and actively enter our stores with a purchase in min

1. Customer - on the first visit to our store the individual may become a customer, this is where knowledge and exceptional customer service are essential in ensuring the customer returns to us as a client.

1. Client - a customer moves from being a customer to becoming a client after two or more visits. This stage is critical. At this stage the customer can go one of four ways:

Protestor - In this case the customer has not been given the kind of service, possibly through misinformation or poor service. This is where they become protestors and may badmouth us to anyone who will listen.

Grasper - A grasper is a money motivated person. They will go where they will get the best deal. They have no natural loyalty, the skill is to engage these customers so that become loyal to you.

Begrudger - The begrudger may have to shop with you because there is no competition in town. However unless they receive the service they want they will do so begrudgingly and may become a protestor and will desert at the earliest opportunity.

If you do everything right they move up the ladder to become…

1. Supporter - At this stage the client has been suitably engaged has received the service they require and has an element of loyalty to you based on the relationship and rapport you have built up with them.

1. Fan - At this stage you have started to win the hearts and minds of the individual. Having built up a positive relationship they like and trust you and are prepared to actively start promoting you to others.

1. Partner - At this stage the customer may come in to see you personally and will not be served by anyone else. Customers usually at this stage are more loyal to you than our company because of the trust generated through consistent world class service. This is the stage we want all our customers to be at.

Have a look at the customer vision, is your store, your team and you working towards this vision, do customers in your store shop in your store because you are the best in your town. Have a look at your Customer mystery shop reports and your NPS scores and think about the strengths and development areas for your store. Have a look at your customer surveys, do they tell you your store is delivering world class customer service?

Is the store a place where customers want to come back and shop?

Do you and all the team truly exist to help all our customers improve their game?