How big of a role does franchise training play in customer loyalty? Many people have the perception that it is just a waste of time to sit through endless seminars that are addressing the same topics and issues. Franchise training plays a bigger role than you may think and brings a lot of value to a corporation.

 Everyone has their favorite place to go shopping or their regular restaurant that they populate so often the entire staff knows your name and what you will order. But what element is the deciding factor that gets these loyal customers to continue to come back? It is not always about the best tasting food or the most expensive clothing or high tech gadgets.

 “So then what is the answer to this mystery?”, you may be asking yourself. Customer experience. Consumers base about 90% on what will get them to come back time after time on their experience when they go shopping or out to eat. It could be anything as simple as the flexible return policies or friendly staff members.

 An excellent example of a company that gives their customers a great shopping experience is Zappos.com. They provide a 24/7 support line for their customers who have questions about their inventory, products, tracking their purchase and any other questions. They also include pre paid postage in their packages for any items that may be getting sent back for returns. Bed Bath and Beyond is always giving their customers a chance to save 20% with their widely spread coupons. Upon time of purchase if the customer does not have a coupon, they can return later after, even after they have bought their item, and receive a refund of 20%.

Nordstrom’s is acknowledged by their customers as being a wonderful and easy place to shop. Their return policy is one of the major deciding factors in why customers continue to shop there. A man once commented about the return policy stating that you almost don’t have to have even bought the item at Nordstrom’s they’ll take it any way. Obviously this statement is exaggerated, but it shows the appreciation and acknowledgement of how compliant Nordstrom’s is with their customers..

So exactly where does franchise training fit in here? Employees working within a chain of restaurants or brand of store, all have to maintain corporate standards. It could be anything like answering the phone in no more than three rings, greeting each and every customer that enters the store, getting to know that customer by name or even flashing a friendly smile.

Whatever the Brand’s mission statement or regulations may be, before working within that corporation each employee must undergo some type of training. This helps to ensure that the reputation and the “way” of the brand is maintained. Franchise training creates easy training material with the essential and imperative protocol to ensure that each employee is helping to uphold that reputation.

So, you have a website and you are getting decent traffic, but you want more! You also want your visitors to come to your website as often as possible; you want to build a relationship with them. You want them to become loyal visitors, and like what you have to offer.

Two words, email marketing!

Email marketing is one of the best strategies to implement if you want more traffic to your website daily, weekly, or monthly as well as building loyalty and a trustworthy relationship.

The aim is to create a membership website where you capture the visitors’ details ie: name, surname and email address. Keep it simple. Once you have these details you then send them tips, advices, informative articles, competitions, etc.. And this ideally will lead them to your website, increasing your traffic and rank.

You can signup with constant contacts (world’s best email marketing system), aweber, pmailer. The costs are listed on their websites, and you can create various different campaigns ie: health tip of the week, daily horoscope, monthly SEO tip. Choose a template of your choice or customise your own. You will be given a script (few lines of code) that you basically copy and paste onto your website. This allows your visitors to fill in their details and saves this information onto the email marketing system.

When you are ready you simply schedule your emails to go off on the specific date and time or click send for immediate delivery.

You must limit the amount of images as some mail servers will block mail that is too large in file size, and as a result you will be losing out on the traffic.

Monitor your bouncers, click through rates (CTR), new subscribers, and most popular articles, as these insights will determine the future success of your website traffic and rankings.

Most important attribute in email marketing is the subject line. Keep this short and to the point. If you are trying to build your brand then you must include your company name eg: ‘SEO agents – SEO tip of the week’. Do not use spammy words like ‘free, win’ etc.

Good luck, and remember always give the visitor what they desire!

Christmas is upon us and I thought I’d share this quick business tidbit with you before beginning my holiday festivities.
Last night my family and I went to eat at a little, out-of-the-way Italian restaurant. Not much to look at from the outside, but the food is excellent and the service is great.
Our meal was outstanding as usual, but as we were finishing, the owner of the restaurant approached our table with a small white box. She asked us if we enjoyed everything and we said, “We always do!”
She went on to explain that every year they want to make sure they thank all of their guests for their patronage throughout the year and with that she opened the small white box revealing a treasure trove of fresh baked cookies.
“This is a small token of our appreciation. We hope you enjoy them.” All homemade cookies, made from their family recipes. I wanted to take a picture of them to support this article… but I’m sad to say, they didn’t survive long enough for the photo session. They were delicious!
What made this really great is that all of their customers received a box of cookies. Not just their “best” customers. Not the ones who brought in a special coupon or signed up for their “VIP card.” Everyone. All of your customers are important and should be treated as such. Without them… there’d just be us.
Merry Christmas everyone.

Define: Brand

When I Google “define: brand,” I get the following result:

trade name: a name given to a product or service

Is this definition accurate?

Traditional marketers would agree with Google’s definition. These individuals spend lots time and money developing a surface image of their brands. They create recognizable logos, catchy taglines, memorable ad campaigns and more to build awareness of their businesses and products. While this design, messaging and advertising might be necessary to promote a brand, they are not the key ingredients that dictate how a brand is established and perceived.

To me, the Google definition seems incomplete at best, superficial at worst. It’s unfair and unwise to presume that good looking logos, clever taglines or high-profile ad campaigns are enough to win customer loyalty.

Rather, brand should be defined as the sum of experiences customers have with a company. In this way, the brand is established and reinforced through every service experience and it embodies customers’ expectation for companies’ products and service experiences.

Wal-Mart is a good example of a powerful brand. When I walk into Wal-Mart, I expect cheap prices and reasonable service. And, that’s what I get. FedEx consistently delivers on what its brand promises: timely delivery. Similarly, Starbucks fulfills customer expectations by offering good coffee and pleasant ambiance. Every Starbucks I’ve visited has the same menu, service and décor. With its hallmark blue box and white glove service, Tiffany’s signifies good taste and high quality. My wife has never been disappointed when she finds a Tiffany’s box under the tree; nor have I when I arrive at the jewelers in need of some helpful suggestions about what she might like.

Brands like these have become powerful because customers get what they expect. Brand value has been established because these companies align their brand promises, or their surface images, with the products and services they’re offering. When they deliver on these promises, consistently over time and through every service experience, they’re able to reinforce and hone customer expectations. In this way, brand is formed through a set of ongoing experiences.

It’s time to stop thinking of branding as a marketing event. Establishing a brand is a journey. And, it starts with aligning brand promise with the service experience a company provides.

Marketing is evolving toward a new thought-framework where the intangible experiences, transactional processes and relationships are becoming central to the brand and the customer has become a ‘co-creator’ of the brand rather than simply just a ‘user’.

The logic of branding is shifting from the conceptualisation of brand as the collection of attributes determined by the organisation, to the brand as collaborative, value creation between all stakeholders including organisations, employees and customers. This shift in logic is important when considering the Internet as a brand-building medium because its modern interactivity or web 2.0 places the user as a co-creator of the content and therefore the brand.

A strong brand provides a series of benefits to both buyers and sellers, simplifying the buyers’ search process and simplifying some of the sellers’ tasks, and enabling competitive advantage through preferential pricing.

Branding is defined as the process of creating value through the provision of a compelling and consistent offer and customer experience that will satisfy customers and keep them coming back¹ . Companies are beginning to realise that brands are among their most valuable assets.

The Internet has had a transformational impact on business shifting the balance of power from companies towards customers  adding further complexity and dynamism to branding strategy. These days brands are socially constructed by consumers who are actively involved in brand creation.

Consumers respond to brands within communities, where the members of the community have a sense of shared consciousness, personal stories, morals and traditions that are all associated with a branded good or service. A great example of this is the new mums community on the Pamper’s community platform. Their brand conversations are not limited to nappies and creams, they are part of building the Medical Aid brands as they share experiences and provide advice on which Medical Aid to choose.

Brand communities have the ability to influence members’ perceptions and actions and can lead to a socially embedded and entrenched loyalty. Although negative implications involving brand communities exist, such as the ability for negative rumours to pervade the community, competitors gaining information through the community’s internal communication and normative community pressure, brand communities offer an effective method for building brands. Companies are able to advance customer engagement with the brand, foster the creation of stronger brand relationships and in so doing mitigate customer exit barriers resulting in increased competitive advantage.

The development of a strong brand community significantly influences brand loyalty and as a result positively impacts on a company’s financial performance and competitive advantage. Online community members potentially have stronger commitment to the brand and are more likely to buy the brand repeatedly, spread more positive word-of-mouth information and provide useful information to the company.

Web 2.0 simplifies the development of an online brand because it facilitates the creation of user-generated content by the community and the interactions of its members around this content.

¹ Aaker, D. (1991) Managing Brand Equity: Capitalizing on the Value of a Brand Name. New York: Free Press

About Digital Bridges

Digital Bridges creates high performance organisations by unlocking the business value of the web. We create digital strategies, user requirement and functional specifications for Intranets, websites and web applications. We also develop and implement social media strategies and create powerful digital brands using eMarketing and Communication.

Digital Bridges approaches the web from a management consulting position and relies heavily on rigorous academic thinking as well as business experience. It is headed up by Kate Elphick who has a Law degree and an MBA from GIBS. Kate has spent the last fifteen years of her career on the business side of the IT industry with companies such as Datatec, Didata, Business ConneXion and Primedia.

Digital Bridges has a broad range of experience working with significant, successful clients in the Financial, Gaming, Tourism, Pharmaceutical, ICT, Legal, Airline, Professional Services, Media and Public Sectors.

To find out more about Digital Bridges, please visit www.digitalbridges.co.za or contact Kate Elphick on katee@digitalbridges.co.za.

During a presentation at the Fourteenth National Forum on Customer Based Marketing Strategies held earlier in 2009 in Las Vegas, John McKeever, president of Gelb Consulting Group and Jim Macksood, associate director of brand strategy and communication at the University of Michigan Health System (UMHS), shared their insights about an experience mapping study conducted at UMHS.

Their insights were captured in an article featured in Strategic Health Care Marketing .  To download a PDF copy, click on Insights from University of Michigan Health System Experience Mapping Study .

When Bruce Temkins of Forrester Research says on his blog (http://experiencematters.wordpress.com) that 2010 will be a busy year for customer experience, he says it right. Strategy, technology, knowing and building relationship with your customers, restoring purpose in your brand, and the list goes on, are all part and parcel of the busyness marketers will experience next year.

The other day I was a participant (@AdaMarcom) on a Twitter chat #sm38 with Charlene Li (@charleneli) and other great marketers discussing social media, she said social media will be a key differentiator for businesses in 2010, where companies/brands who do well in this arena will increase customer loyalty, I was a bit skeptical.

Yes, social media tools on websites can help differentiate your products from your competition. They will make customer experience more pleasant and welcoming. But when most companies are going on Twitter and Facebook, responding to sales inquiries and handling customer service questions, then what could have been a differentiator is now part of life (the way of doing business). Companies are expected to provide satisfactory customer service, be it via a social media tool, a mix of social media tools or over the phone and email. More so in 2010 and the years to come, given more choices and increased exposure to brands in the media (online, TV, print and events), customers are becoming more knowledgeable than ever. They’re not only becoming selective and knowledgeable about the products themselves, they’re also getting pickier than ever about their shopping experience, how companies handle their orders, and what sources/sites they’re getting their products from.

“Don’t think of social media as an incremental “thing” to be handed off to a consumer. Your social media strategy is an extension of your company’s behavior,” said James Kelly on Forbes.com’s CMO Network in an article named “CMOs: Don’t Give Up Those Brand Reins!”

Customer service experience, with a smart choice of technology and social media tools, is going to be the key differentiator of marketing success and good company behavior in 2010. May I call it the “all-around” customer service experience? When I can pick up the phone, send an email, tweet my question, post on a Facebook fan page about the product I’m considering, finding help to research the product I’m purchasing, rating my experience with the product (and the process of getting the product into my hand), YouTubing the way the product works if it’s really that cool to warrant a video of its own, I think that’s ultimate all-around customer service experience.

Customers still dominate the center-stage of product marketing; they still have the reins the last time I checked. Though Time magazine just announced the “Person of the Year” to be Ben Bernanke, I think the ultimate person of the year is “I” the customer.

Let’s end with this thought on customer loyalty, and we’ll expand on this discussion in my next post: “Real value of social media/technologies is that it creates deeper relationships. How do you measure relationships?” tweeted by @charleneli on the Twitter chat #sm38. Building strong customer relationships will help unleash the true value of social media and technologies, hence giving you the best bank for the buck you spent on achieving it.

I believe with the thinking of creating deeper relationships and measuring them, we as marketers will head the right direction in 2010.

Related posts: Are you capturing your customers' full value?
10 Customer Service Trends in 2010
Social Media Convergence

Many companies like to boast that employees are their greatest source of competitive advantage, yet the reality is somewhat different. it has become imperative for us to focus not only on how we attract and retain talented people, but also on how we engage them to deliver to our bottom line, to the best of their abilities.

Gone are the days of company loyalty. Talented employees see themselves as mobile and in control of the future of their careers. As the workforce becomes more mobile, gains control of negotiations with employers, the costs of managing and retaining talent intensify because we need to take a strategic approach to attracting talent and managing our competitive advantage.

So where do marketing and innovation fit into the picture?

In their book Marketing Management, Kotler and Keller (2006) say that “Marketing deals with identifying and meeting human and social needs”. The American Marketing Association (2004) defines marketing as “an organisational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organisation and its stakeholders”. The social definition of the role of marketing in society is “a societal process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating, offering and freely exchanging (products and) services of value with others.”

Substitute the word “customer” with “employee” and we see a remarkable similarity in the processes for attracting and retaining talent.

To escape the economically challenged business models that have their roots in a time when talent was plentiful, companies will need to adopt a strategic approach to the HR processes for attracting, retaining and engaging talent through innovation (Hamel 2007). Elements of this approach can be adopted from marketing best practice.

So how could we use innovation and marketing to mitigate the skills shortages?

There are several steps in creating, communicating and delivering value to employees and for managing relationships in ways that benefit the organisation and its stakeholders

Creating value through innovating employee processes

Many organisations have removed themselves from their employees and adopted processes to automate their management and standardise their delivery. This was entirely relevant in a manufacturing world such as we saw in the last century, where the unit we applied to make money was labour. Today, it is intellectual capital that provides competitive advantage. The rules have changed, we are no longer standardising delivery, but amplifying it.

Take a good look at your business. Are you creating sustainable competitive advantage through your most important assets? Have you evaluated and innovated the principles, processes and practices that are based on outdated economic and business environments? Wealth creation will come from ensuring that you get a superior return on your employee investment. This is the product of attracting, retaining and engaging superior skills that are committed to acting in the best interests of your organisation.

Delivering value to your employees

We find ourselves in a very interesting time; just as we see the rise of the power of the knowledge worker as a revenue generating resource, along comes a new technology in the form of web 2.0 which enables us to change the way we manage to get the best return from employees.

The Gartner Group describes web 2.0 as “a transformative force that’s propelling companies across all industries towards a new way of doing business characterised by harnessing collective intelligence, openness and network effects.” We derive value from our employees by engaging with them, delivering the value to them as knowledge workers and motivating them to act in the best interests of the organisation.

The future of how an organisation will derive value from its employees is gathering pace on the web. The Internet is the most adaptable, innovative and engaging thing that human beings have ever created (Hamel, 2007).

The modern role of employee management is to magnify human effort, this is now possible using web 2.0 to get more out of individuals by harnessing their initiative, creativity and passion and then equip them with the tools, incentives and working conditions to compound those efforts in ways that allow human beings to achieve together what they could not do individually.

Grow your employer brand

Critically evaluate your brand from the point of view of potential and existing employees. You may know that you work for a first-rate organisation, but does prospective talent know this and how much credibility does your employer brand have in the market? How can they recognise you as a superior employer above other companies?

In marketing there are three primary ways to communicate your value; advertise it, use compelling public relations and rely on word of mouth. When communicating to your employees and future employees, the best way, is to let them experience it and tell others about it. What better way than to harness the power of 2.0 as a strategic business tool in your organisation?

About Digital Bridges

Digital Bridges creates high performance organisations by unlocking the business value of the web. We create digital strategies, user requirement and functional specifications for Intranets, websites and web applications. We also develop and implement social media strategies and create powerful digital brands using eMarketing and Communication.

Digital Bridges is technology agnostic and partners with great technology companies in order to ensure that our solutions are fit for purpose and deliver on organisational strategy.

Digital Bridges approaches the web from a management consulting position and relies heavily on rigorous academic thinking as well as business experience. It is headed up by Kate Elphick who has a Law degree and an MBA from GIBS. Kate has spent the last fifteen years of her career on the business side of the IT industry with companies such as Datatec, Didata, Business ConneXion and Primedia. Her skills include innovation and growth through marketing, communication, collaboration, knowledge management, human capital, performance management, process engineering and BI.

Digital Bridges has a broad range of experience working with significant, successful clients in the Financial, Gaming, Tourism, Pharmaceutical, ICT, Legal, Airline, Professional Services, Media and Public Sectors.

To find out more about Digital Bridges, please visit www.digitalbridges.co.za or contact Kate Elphick on katee@digitalbridges.co.za.

Net Promoter Score™ is an effective and efficient process to measure the health of your customer relationship. Used correctly, Net Promoter Score can be the driver of superior business performance.  But how is the other team doing?  What is the health of your competitors’ customer relationships?

Business is a very competitive “sport”. Like any pro sports team, businesses are constantly striving to find the competitive edge that will move the ball forward, put the puck in the net, or drop another basket. Pro sports teams have professional scouts checking on the competition throughout the season. They look for weaknesses in the competitive teams that can be exploited for the benefit of their own team. In business we don’t have scouts, but we do have processes like Net Promoter Score that can identify the strengths and weaknesses of the competition. This will help generate customer acquisition, improve retention, grow market share and drive bottom line profits. In short, Net Promoter Score can help you hit the ball out of the park. Just take a look at Apple, a company dedicated to Net Promoter Score that also hits a lot of home runs.

Using Net Promoter Score will identify how many of your customers are Promoters and how many are Detractors. But, do you know how many Promoters your competitor has? How likely are your competitor’s customers to recommend? What are the NPS® verbatim responses telling you about your competitor’s organization, structure and service delivery? Remember that your Detractors will tell you how to fix your business. Consider how much competitive intelligence you’ll get by listening to your competitor’s Detractors. You might just find that golden nugget of information that can turn the game in your favor.

Dig a little deeper into your competitor’s Net Promoter Score. Break it down by geography, demographics, or user segments. You may find that your competitor looks strong on the surface, but analyzing their Net Promoter Score could expose a weak underbelly that you can take advantage of.  Just imagine what you could do if you discovered that your key competitor has a very high number of Detractors on the west coast who are female, under the age of 35 years, single, university educated and hate  their current service provider’s customer service. Perhaps your competitor’s customers on the east coast are less likely to recommend the longer they use their product or service. With this kind of scouting information, you’d be able to call the play that drives right through the defensive line and scores a touchdown. You’d be the hero.

Gathering a competitive Net Promoter Score can be accomplished using telephone or online data collection methodologies. It’s all legal and above board and part of a good competitive intelligence program.  Finding the competitor’s customers might the toughest part of the project. Data collection companies can source customer contact information using a huge array of brokered lists and online panels, but working with a qualified data collection company is critical to ensure the data collected is valid and trustworthy. Do not depend on your own field team or sales force to provide competitive NPS information since you need data that is unbiased and unfiltered.

Still not convinced that you need to track your competitor’s Net Promoter Score? Well, what if they are tracking your score? What would they uncover by listening to your Detractors and how would they exploit this information?  Ever wonder how the competition comes up with that new product, unique service or killer application?  Maybe they did a little scouting on your customers and found a hole in your defense.

Remember! The best defense is a strong offense. Use Net Promoter Score as your strongest offensive strategy.

Keith Chapin is a Certified Net Promoter® Associate and Consultant with over 35 years of experience in research, marketing and customer insights. He can be reached at kchapin@sympatico.ca.

Net Promoter, NPS, and Net Promoter Score are trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.

Author : VESILIANI, VENA

Penelitian ini disusun untuk mengetahui pengaruh program Relationship Marketing yang terdiri dari Customer Service, Loyalty Program, dan Community Building terhadap Loyalitas pelanggan SOGO Department Store Plasa Tunjungan 4 di Surabaya. Sampel yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah sebesar jumlah sampel yang ada yaitu sebanyak 200 orang. Tahap analisis data menggunakan model regresi berganda seri program SPSS versi 11.50. Dari hasil analisa regresi, penulis menemukan bahwa secara serempak ada pengaruh yang signifikan antara variabel Customer Service, Loyalty Program, dan Community Building terhadap loyalitas pelanggan SOGO Department Store Plasa Tunjungan 4 di Surabaya. Selain itu variabel yang paling berpengaruh terhadap loyalitas pelanggan SOGO Di Surabaya adalah customer service.

Keyword : retail, relationship marketing, customer service, loyalty program, community building, customer loyalty

Sumber : http://repository.petra.ac.id/3255/

Author : THERESIA, SERLY

This thesis is written by the writers as the requirement to finish the writer?s study in Hotel Management of Petra Christian University, Indonesia and Christelijke Hogeschool Noord Nederland. The first part of this thesis will give some information and description about The “Lucky City” Restaurant in Hoofddorp-Noord Nederland. The second part of this thesis will contain a qualitative research that the writers have done, which will be started by reviewing the literature. The literature review will explain and describe about what relationship marketing is, what customer loyalty is, who are your customers, how to make a good relation with the customers through relationship marketing, how relationship marketing influence customer loyalty, and how to measure customer loyalty. The qualitative research will contain of observation to the market, interview with sources of information, in this case is the owner from the restaurant “Lucky City” in Hoofddorp and also the writers will give questionnaires to the customer that is related. The third part of this thesis will contain the main idea from this thesis; this part will try to show us how to reach customer loyalty through relationship marketing. The fourth part of this thesis will contain the customer analysis. And the last part of this thesis will be the conclusion from the whole research and observation from the writers within 10 months working in “Lucky City” restaurant in Hoofddorp. The writers decided to choose this topic because the writers thought that this case is relevant with the current condition and situation, because most of the customers in restaurant “Lucky City” are existing customers. The writers hope that this thesis will give some help and information about relationship marketing to get customer loyalty.

Keyword : restaurant, customer loyalty

Sumber : http://repository.petra.ac.id/1823/

Author : TJONG, CAROLIN

Indonesian tourism was chosen to be the topic that could be interesting to be analyzed as in the late years; the country image has been decreasing due to bombing issues, terrorism issues and economic crisis. Besides, based on the data that the writer had obtained, the numbers of Dutch tourists were decreasing slightly higher than the other European countries. Some research, including primary and secondary research, had been done to reach the most accurate result. The aim of the research is to show whether or not any relation between the decrease on numbers of Dutch tourists and the negative issues towards Indonesia. The result showed that most of the respondents who had never been to Indonesia were less interested to visit Indonesia due to the negative image that the country possessed. Realizing this finding, the writer had some suggestions which were related to building new positioning and renewing marketing strategy to establish positive image and attract more Dutch tourist or even international tourist visiting Indonesia in future years.

Keyword : image management, customer satisfaction, segmenting, targeting, positioning, customer loyalty

Sumber : http://repository.petra.ac.id/1156/

Author : LISTYANI, LISA

Dengan semakin berkembangnya bisnis kafe ini akan memberikan alternatif pada konsumen untuk memilih tempat pembelian yang paling ideal guna memenuhi kebutuhannya. Agar perusahaan mampu bersaing dan tetap bertahan, maka pihak manajemen perlu melakukan pendekatan dan penelitian, khususnya yang berhubungan dengan perilaku konsumen. Strategi yang digunakan oleh perusahaan bisnis ini dalam meningkatkan hubungannya dengan pelanggan adalah dengan membangun suatu ikatan khusus melalui Relationship Marketing. Untuk itu pihak manajemen De Boliva ice cream Surabaya perlu memberikan perhatian masalah-masalah dalam membangun hubungan yang baik terhadap kesetiaan konsumen dalam pembelian produk tersebut. Hasil analisis didapat financial benefit, social benefit dan structural ties mempunyai pengaruh yang signifikan terhadap customer loyalty di De Boliva Ice Cream Surabaya dengan nilai F hitung lebih besar daripada F tabel.

Keyword : financial benefit, social benefit, structural ties, customer loyalty, de boliva ice cream gubeng surabaya

Sumber : http://repository.petra.ac.id/1136/

Author : CAROLLINA, NOVIANTY

Honda is one of car global brand as it is being produced in Japan. Therefore as Honda Company has made its way to global enrichment, it produces Honda cars not only in Japan. Currently PT. IMSI is a car distributor (main dealer) in East Java, Bali and Lombok. PT. IMSI is a potential company, it has its strengths in some parts but also there were some problems appear in the company. This FAR was focusing in the service value, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and companies? revenue growth as a chain relationship in the Service Profit Chain model approach as currently service is a crucial part in the business era. The results of the research show the relationship between service value, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty was associated positively. However, there was no association between customer loyalty and revenue growth after all. Based on the problems appeared in the company and the findings, management of IMSI could develop its business performances by developing company?s competitive strategy and management philosophy on the basis of this analysis.

Keyword : service profit chain, service value, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, revenue growth

Sumber : http://repository.petra.ac.id/1091/

“0.5% reduction in mobile subscriber churn rate can increase revenue by 74%” – No really, but don’t stop reading, let us talk realistically about customer loyalty, customer lifetime value and  effect of loyalty on your profit.

Let us take AT&T as an example. It has a current monthly churn rate of 1.17%, the lowest among top 3. Churn rate is the % of current subscribers leaving the service provider. This translates to 14% yearly churn rate. Conversely, AT&T’s customer loyalty is 86%. So lifetime of an average customer with AT&T is  1/14% = 7.14 years.

Let us assume all customers bring in same revenue for simplicity (even though this is wrong)  of $x/year. So customer lifetime value is 7.14x. Let us say AT&T spends $200 to acquire a customer and the monthly bill is $50. The Lifetime Value of the customer (ignoring PV calculation) is$4084.

If AT&T can reduce their monthly churn by 0.5% -  0.5% reduction in churn makes the churn rate 0.67%/month, 8.04%/year, 12.4 years, that is 5.26 years more than previous state and hence 74% increase in revenue. If only AT&T can decrease its monthly churn by 0.5%, it can increase its revenue by 74%.

QED?

Let us pick apart this spurious reasoning and sleight of hand:

1. Anytime you increase average lifetime of customers you increase revenues proportionately. There is nothing magic here. So stating, ” increasing loyalty, when everything else like prices is held constant, increases revenue ” is self evident truth and not an insight.
2. I said reduction of 0.5% monthly churn rate. In reality this is reduction from 1.17% to  0.67% – this is confusing two different percentage scales. In reality this is 43% reduction in monthly churn.
3. What is it going to cost me to reduce churn by 43%? What is the new infrastructure investment needed? What is the opportunity cost of this investment? What is the incremental profit from this investment? Is this going to require “buying loyalty” with price cuts and promotions? Even if you gain or buy loyalty, is that stable and sustainable? If AT&T is going to spend money on this, will Verizon and Sprint stay still? Can the money be better spent in acquiring new customers?

Without answering these questions, it is pointless for me or any management guru to say to you to focus on customer loyalty and it is irresponsible for a decision maker to accept these pseudo-facts without challenging them.

Forget content, just have conversations (okay…also go for quality and yes, with the right people)!

During a recent think-tank exercise of sales leaders determining what was the next best skill, tool and/or practice that would dramatically increase sales, an interesting revelation occurred. It was nothing new, it was something we all knew; having more conversations!

What is a conversation; a business discussion; nothing more, nothing less! What makes this discovery so special  is really how the best of the best have made their living for decades selling; doing whatever was necessary to create selling situations. So we could also now define a conversation as a business conversation that presents a buy-sell opportunity.

This discovery also leads us to focus on the most significant metric of all; appointments! What is an appointment; a designated and mutually agreed to activity (phone, web or in person) with a designated time documented in something like Outlook  for parties to have a conversation. There will always be a ratio of closed sales (transactions and revenue) per conversations (appointments) completed.

The real big discovery for us all, was how so few organizations are coaching to the activity of having conversations /appointments; perhaps the most significant predictive analytic of sales success.

The economy is having a detrimental impact on a significant number of businesses to say the least of major industries overall.  Thus, customer’s are fewer and those customers who are spending are bound to get more favorably responses to their inquiries than ever before. This means everyone is potentially fighting over the same customer.

But, are they really?  Probably not if you have a loyal customer who calls you at the first sign there’s a problem you can potentially fix.  But the competition will do their best to get every nickel they can which means your loyal customer may actually think twice when in need of a service you offer.

Good businesses recognize this fact and do a number of things to make sure their company is top of mind when their loyal customers have a need such as >>>

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My list of books I want to read is now up to 321. It’s a combination of pop culture books, historical novels, silly pass the time books and business books. If I could have a year off and just read I’d love it! But, since that’s not possible, I’ll have to slowly tackle the books one by one. Below is my list of business books to read and some that I have recently read. Happy reading.

Big Moo: Stop Trying to be Perfect and Start Being Remarkable by Seth Godin

Cancel the Meetings, Keep the Doughnuts by Richard Moran

Connecting with your Customers by Harvard Business School Press

Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore

Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless: How to Make Them Love You, Keep You Coming Back, and Tell Everyone They Know by Jeffrey Gitomer

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by Jim Collins

Marketing Corporate Image: The Company As Your Number One Product by James Gregory

Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi

No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t by Robert I. Sutton

Predicting Market Success: New Ways to Measure Customer Loyalty and Engage Consumers with Your Brand by Robert Passikoff

SocialCorp – Social Media Goes Corporate by Joel Postman

Stories that Sell: The Complete Guide to Success-Story Marketing by Casey Hibbard

Twitter Means Business by Julio Ojeda-Zapata

What They Still Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School by Mark McCormack

Who’s Your Gladys by Marilyn Suttle and Lori Jo Vest

Do you have other books you’d recommend or that are on your list?

By Irina Skaya

Facebook was among the hundred words of the Top Marketing Buzz Words of 2008.  Many brands have been on Facebook for a couple of years now, but only a handful are successful in this social platform, meaning only a few have active fans who engage with the fan page on a regular basis.  Some marketers approach my agency to help them build brand awareness and customer loyalty on Facebook, while others already have a presence in the world’s largest social network, but are not sure how to acquire more fans or engage existing fans.  Based on my experience with managing our clients’ Facebook fan pages, I’ve developed the following ten best practices for Facebook fan page management:

1. Dedicate a social media manager to monitor the page several times a day, in order to remove any comments that illustrate abusive, obscene, or defamatory language. Develop a crisis management plan in order to respond to inflammatory comments in a timely manner.
2. Determine the brand voice of the page and integrate fans’ wall posts with the brands’ posts in order to encourage conversation between fans and foster a community.
3. Include a legal disclaimer on the fan page that encourages fans to respect other community members and refrain from using abusive, obscene, or defamatory language.  Examples: www.facebook.com/dove, www.facebook.com/halls
4. Comment on fan posts rather than just drop a post, a link, or a picture periodically on the page is crucial in order to add value to the posts with additional information and foster conversations.
5. Integrate other web properties and Facebook applications in order to enable fans to do more and spread the message about your brand.  Examples include fan page badges, applications to the brand’s blog, Twitter handle, etc.  (See www.facebook.com/cocacola)
6. Leverage company celebrities/spokespeople to communicate with fans, speak on behalf of the brand about the brand, and its unique selling proposition. If the CEO has a corporate video blog, it can be integrated into the Facebook fan page.  Examples: www.facebook.com/yobabyyogurt
7. Provide fans with incentives, including coupons, product locator application, tips, new product announcements, news, and other resource information.  Offering an informational resource allows a brand to target a new demographic, outside of those that already know and love the business. Examples: http://www.facebook.com/herbalessences; http://facebook.com/internationaldelight; http://facebook.com/redmango.
8. Pay attention to the Facebook insights in order to understand which posts are truly motivating your fans to interact.
9. Make your fans feel special. Reward fans for participating, let them know you are watching and foster further engagement.  Make a fan of the week, allowing fans to badge their page and site with something that clearly marks them as an extended member of the brand family.  Example: http://www.facebook.com/dunkindonuts
10. Don’t assume your Twitter audiences are your Facebook fans, too. You will have a healthy minority who are on Twitter, but the community that participates on Facebook trends to be different than those on Twitter.

Do you have any best practices for managing brand Facebook Fan Pages or successful case studies? Feel free to share them here!

Seems the recent full moon has been bringing out those annoying behaviors that drive leaders crazy. I’m talking about things like lateness, absenteeism, missing daily huddles, not following procedures, right up to the ever-present “it’s good enough/it’s not my job” mentality. Yes, it’s all that behavior stuff that ultimately leads to one dramatic and sad conclusion – breaking the company’s promise to the customer.

What’s this big promise I’m referring to? The answer is pretty simple. You promise quality, personal attention, reliability, consistency, fast resolutions to problems, going above and beyond, integrity, team service and so on. Your promise contains all of those lofty and inspiring experiences you want the company you lead to deliver in mass quantities to your customers.

I just did a No-Compromise Leadership speech for the American Society of Quality. The room was filled with individuals from some rather significant corporate entities that are all in some way responsible for ensuring their company’s promise of “quality” is upheld. To do so, they plan it, measure it, track it and tweak it with extremely sophisticated systems and processes. I asked the group this question: “What’s the one overriding variable that interferes with your promise of delivering quality?” They instantly responded, “People.” From that point forward, the conversation sounded like, “How many times do we need to tell them?” and, “What do you do when people just don’t care?” It doesn’t matter how big or small a company is, all leaders share the same challenges.

Is it good for the customer? That’s the question leaders need to ask themselves and every employee. When introducing a new procedure or system, a common reaction is, “How will this affect me?” It’s that inward and natural resistance to change. But when you make doing what’s best for the customer the focus of change, you’re saying, “This isn’t about you or me. This is about delivering on our promise to the customer. We need to do this. We need to make it work.” Is it good for the customer? That’s the question leaders must ask. Everything else is secondary.

To deliver on your promise to the customer, everyone in your company must be engaged and playing. Part of that engagement is connecting every employee’s performance and behavior to “the promise.” Lateness and absenteeism break the promise. Missing huddles break the promise. So does not following procedures and accepting “average” as good enough. You will never help an employee get into the game until he or she understands how individual behavior can create a tidal wave of inconsistencies that ultimately compromises customer experiences and loyalty. And a company can never achieve customer loyalty in the presence of broken promises.

Pass this email on to your business colleagues, managers and friends.

Neil Ducoff, Strategies founder & CEO and author of No-Compromise Leadership