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| Talk
to Your Customers, It Pays Dividends |
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You have to tangibly demonstrate that you
appreciate your customer to the point where you are willing
to earn your customer's loyalty repeatedly. This type of behaviour
is conspicuous by its absence. Talking to your customers is
not about mass email or sms campaigns, this is merely a cheaper
more efficient way of achieving the same thing, mass marketing
with no individualized appeal. It can erode brand value and
is annoying. Truly talking to your customers is about engaging
in dialogue. Allow for feedback, provide responses, build relationships.
These are all hallmarks of the dialoguemarketing
system. Communication is a business imperative.
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For
some industries retention marketing is aimed at the vulnerable
customers, to reduce attrition and defection. In this
regard, marketing retention strategies that steadily reduce
the defection rate over long periods of time are more
successful and generate greater profit returns each successive
year. Immediate promotional offers and discounts merely
delay the defection decision, since they fail to address
the reasons for defection or to get to know the customer.
Short term strategies are usually unjustified financially.
For many industries though, most customers are vulnerable
all of the time, making purchase decisions with no brand
loyalty. |
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these instances the strategy is less one of retention marketing,
and more about making a positive impact. Positive impact strategies
are about the customer experience, are long term in nature and
are area in which dialoguemarketing
is profoundly powerful. |
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| Manage
Your Back End to Create Positive Customer Experiences |
It
is crucial to optimise every single customer touch point,
to name a few, product displays, in-store music and atmosphere,
employee cleanliness and courtesy, delivery punctuality,
production accuracy and lead time, quality control, customer
feedback, invoicing accuracy, website layout and functionality,
telephone etiquette, store access and employee interactions.
Any failure, at any one of the many touch points, can
easily undo your many marketing efforts and lead to defection.
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If
you look at the many integrated business functions that need
to perform in harmony, it is easy to see why customer service
suffers. Fortunately dialoguemarketing
can act as the overseer of the various functions, prompt for
timely employee action, report any oversights, communicate with
the customer, receive feedback on service and product delivery,
request information from suppliers, keep customers updated and
request timely payment of outstanding fees.
How is all this achieved? Quite simply by recognising all the
parties involved in a successful transaction, then proactively
communicating with each of the relevant parties, at the most
appropriate time, in the most appropriate medium, to ensure
timely actions are being taken to ensure customer expectations
are being met. Not only does dialoguemarketing
act as a call to action, but it also plays a controlling function.
Actions taken by the integrated business functions are reported
to management, by means of communication, thereby ensuring that
management remains in a strong decision-making position. These
types of intricate communications assure that your service levels
are optimised and the customer experience is positive. They
expect nothing less. |
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Talk
to Your Customers, It Pays Dividends
