Three Proven Strategies that Build Customer Loyalty

Most organizations struggle to find ways in which they can build customer loyalty and reduce customer churn. Many of these companies spend large amounts of money and time creating costly reward programs, sending out expensive marketing materials, and investing in expensive customer relationship management systems. While each of these components has value and contribute to customer satisfaction; the following are three proven strategies that build customer loyalty can be used by customer service representatives.

1. Become a trusted customer resource. Customers often encounter life challenges that require expertise beyond their capabilities. For example, an electrical light switch stops working, a toilet starts leaning, their computer starts giving error messages, or they start experiencing problems with their car. In each of these instances, people will often turn to a reputable source for assistance to help resolve the issue. If you are that source, take the time to listen empathetically and then demonstrate that you have the knowledge and expertise to assist them. By effectively and efficiently helping navigate the problem and coming to a speedy and cost-effective resolution, you can show value for the products and services that you and your organization provide. You can also increase customer satisfaction and help ensure that they will return to you again in the future.

2. Demonstrate integrity. In a world where stories of unethical or illegal behavior from businesses and service providers are commonplace, you have an opportunity to excel in demonstrating your own integrity. You can do so by:

Keeping your word and meeting agreed to timeframes and commitments.
Being honest.
Being consistent and reliable in your service delivery.
Providing quality products competitive warranties and guarantees.

3. Address service breakdowns professionally.

Things do not always go the way you plan. An unexpected delay may necessitate a schedule modification or a product may fail to perform as expected or promised. When such glitches occur, take the opportunity to listen to your customer and immediately take the appropriate action(s) to address the situation. Work professionally to identify the issue and cause, and then negotiate an acceptable remedy. By showing that you are committed to resolving the issue to the customer’s satisfaction in a timely manner, you can retain their trust and confidence that you are working in their best interest.

By taking these three simple steps as a customer service representative, you can assure your customers that you are interested in meeting their needs, wants and expectations. You also show that you will put forth the effort to ensure that they are satisfied.

What are other customer loyalty strategies that you use, or have experienced, related to building customer loyalty?

In addition to the three proven strategies that build customer loyalty listed above, you can find many additional ideas for building and maintaining strong customer relationships in these resources – Customer Service Skills for Success, Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures and How to Be a Great Call Center Representative.

Customer Relationship Management Initiatives Focus on Customer Loyalty and Retention

by Robert W. Lucas

Customer Relationship Management Initiatives Focus on Customer Loyalty and Retention

Providing Effective Customer Service in a Diverse World At one point in history, business owners knew their customers personally. They knew their customers’ families, what their religious affiliation was, and what was happening in their lives. Customers dealt with the owners of a business and had personal relationships with them. That was then, and this is now. That is why many customer relationship management initiatives focus on customer loyalty and retention.

Our current society is more mobile; people live in large metropolitan areas where customer relationships are distant, and families live miles apart from one another in many instances. Large multinational organizations provide the products and services once provided by the neighborhood store. All this does not mean, however, that the customer-provider relationship can no longer exist. Many successful organizations, and those who want to become successful, spend a lot of time, effort and money on building and maintaining strong customer relationship management program.

Why bother building relationships with customers? The answer would seem obvious—so that you can stay in business. However, when you examine the question further, you may find that there are more reasons than you think. This is where the customer relationship management (CRM) concept comes in. In effect, such initiatives strive to create ongoing friendships with customers and focus on making them feel comfortable with the organization and its service providers in order to enhance customer and brand loyalty. By training all employees, especially frontline customer service representatives, to more effectively interact with customers and deliver excellent customer service, organizations are more likely to gain and retain a loyal customer base.

To learn more about effectively creating a customer-centric organization that continually strives to improve service to internal and external customers while working to achieve customer satisfaction, get a copy of Customer Service Skills for Success.

Customer Relations Equal Sales, Customer Satisfaction and Customer Retention

by Robert W. Lucas

Customer Relations Equal Sales,

Customer Satisfaction and Customer Retention

If you are not striving to build the best customer relationships possible with those you encounter in your organization, then you are failing as a service professional.

Everyone from front-line customer service representatives to senior management has a responsibility to do what it takes to secure customer trust and continually focus their efforts (and those of the organization as a whole) on meeting customer needs, wants and expectations. Delivering excellent customer service should be not only a goal; it should be the goal every day that you go to work.

Trust is a Crucial Part of Customer Relations and Customer Retention

by Robert W. Lucas

Trust is a Crucial Part of Customer Relations and Customer Retention

An important point that many customer service representatives and other employees often forget is that customer satisfaction drives organizational success. If sound customer service skills are not taught to every employee at all levels and they fail to consistently provide excellent customer service, chances are that customer retention and trust are going to be negatively impacted.

When customer service breaks down, at issue in many provider-customer relationships is how well the organization meets customer needs, wants and expectations. When customer service representatives do not deliver products and services promised on time, in the manner promised and at the quality level expected, customer satisfaction and customer trust can be negatively impacted.

Unfortunately, once trust is gone it might never be regained, at least to prior levels. This is why employees must be vigilant in what they promise and in how they deliver products and services to customers.

If you want some specific ideas and strategies for building and maintaining trust with your customers get copies of Customer Service Skills for Success.

Building Customer Relationships

by Robert W. Lucas

Building Customer Relationships to Increase Customer Retention

The only way for customer service representatives and their organizations to excel is by first building strong customer service relationships.

By exhibiting stellar product and service knowledge and employing effective customer service skills, listening and communicating verbally and non verbally they are able to properly determine customer needs, wants and expectations. Once they determine these things, they are on their way to providing customer satisfaction and helping build customer and brand loyalty.

If this makes sense to you and you would like to learn specific strategies for enhancing interpersonal relationship skills and other strategies for obtaining and retaining customers, get copies of my books, Customer Service Skills for Success and Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures.

About Robert C. Lucas

Bob Lucas has been a trainer, presenter, customer service expert, and adult educator for over four decades. He has written hundreds of articles on training, writing, self-publishing, and workplace learning skills and issues. He is also an award-winning author who has written thirty-seven books on topics such as, writing, relationships, customer service, brain-based learning, and creative training strategies, interpersonal communication, diversity, and supervisory skills. Additionally, he has contributed articles, chapters, and activities to eighteen compilation books. Bob retired from the U.S. Marine Corps in 1991 after twenty-two years of active and reserve service.

The Role of Trust in Customer Service

by Robert W. Lucas

The Role of Trust in Customer Service

Trust is at the heart of any customer-provider relationship, especially when there is an exchange of money for products or services. For a customer to hand over his or her hard-earned cash to you and your organization typically takes a bit of persuasion through advertising or word-of-mouth endorsements from previous customers. All of this is developed by an ongoing investment of time, effort, and money from your organization and commitment and initiative from each service provider.

For trust to start and grow, your customers must believe several things about you and your organization:

1. You and the organization have the customer’s best interests in mind before, during, and after the transaction.

2. You and the organization are honest and forthcoming with customers and your goal is to deliver the best products and services possible in a timely manner and at a fair price.

3. You have quality products and services that are backed by a guarantee that should something go wrong, it will be quickly and earnestly taken care of.

For customers to continue doing business with you, they must trust you and your organization. The thing about trust is that it has to be earned, and that does not happen overnight. Only through continued positive efforts on the part of everyone in your organization can you demonstrate to customers that you are worthy of their trust and thereby positively affect customer retention. Through actions and deeds, you must deliver quality products, services, and information that satisfy the needs, wants and expectations of your customer(s) when, where and how you promise them. Every touch point with a customer is an opportunity for you and your organization to influence customer loyalty.

Even when you win the trust and achieve customer satisfaction, the customer relationship is very fragile. It is easy to destroy trust quickly; an inappropriate tone, a missed appointment, failure to follow through on a promise, a lie, and a misleading statement or information to a customer are just some of the ways you can sabotage this relationship.

For more ideas on how to build a more customer-centric organization in which trust becomes part of the customer-provider relationship and can lead to customer and brand loyalty, get a copy of Customer Service Skills for Success by Robert W. Lucas.

About Robert C. Lucas

Make Money Writing Books: Proven Profit Making Strategies for Authors by Robert W. Lucas at Amazon.com.

The key to successfully making money as an author and/or self-publisher is to brand yourself and your company and to make yourself and your book(s) a household name. Part of this is face-to-face interaction with people at trade shows, library events, book readings, book store signings, blogging or guest blogging on a topic related to their book(s). Another strategy involves writing articles and other materials that show up online and are found when people search for a given topic related to a topic about which the author has written.

If you need help building an author platform, branding yourself and your book(s) or generating recognition for what you do, Make Money Writing Books will help. Bob’s popular book addresses a multitude of ideas and strategies that you can use to help sell more books and create residual and passive income streams. The tips outlined in the book are focused to help authors but apply to virtually any professional trying to increase personal and product recognition and visibility.

Generating Positive Customer and Brand Loyalty

by Robert W. Lucas

Generating Positive Customer and Brand Loyalty

Customers are your reason for existing as an employee. They are also the key element in your organization’s success. For that reason, customer service representatives must consciously go out of your way to identify and anticipate their needs, then address them in an expedient and professional manner.

Just because someone is a customer today, does not mean that they will remain so in the future. Unfortunately, consumer opinions in many parts of the world have shifted related to customer and brand loyalty. In the past, people often exhibited brand loyalty for cars, laundry detergent, restaurants, airlines, and many other items and services. With the advent of technology, global trade and easy access to alternative and comparable products and services, it is not unusual for someone to move to a new product, service or provider to meet their needs based strictly on factors like price, service or availability. The result is that many well-known major organizations and products have changed dramatically, evolved or disappeared in the past decades. Examples are Montgomery Ward, Pontiac and Plymouth automobiles, Eastern Airlines, and Steak and Ale and Bennigan’s restaurants. In instances where manufacturers have recognized the need for product modifications to address customer needs, wants and expectations, they have modified or added additional varieties to their product lines (e.g. Coca Cola and Pepsi, Tide detergent, Cheerios cereal, and Crest toothpaste).

In order to help ensure customer loyalty, you must place your customer first in all dealings and know your products, services, policies, procedures, and competition well. You must also continually seek to enhance your knowledge and skills while staying attuned to current consumer behaviors and trends. Ultimately, your goal is to be the “go-to” person and organization for whatever products or services you offer. You want to deliver the best customer service possible.

For strategies and ideas on how to create customer loyalty, get copies of Customer Service Skills for Success and Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures.

About Robert C. Lucas

Make Money Writing Books: Proven Profit Making Strategies for Authors by Robert W. Lucas at Amazon.com.

Importance of a Positive Attitude in a Service Culture

by Robert W. Lucas

Importance of a Positive Attitude in a Service Culture

Ever thought about the word attitude? Some say that attitude is everything. If yours is positive, then you likely succeed and are happy. If it is negative, chances are you find yourself feeling depressed and constantly dealing with stressful situations or confrontations with others.

Look at it this way, a positive attitude can allow you to give 100% in your daily efforts. Don’t believe it? The American English alphabet has twenty-six letters in it. Go through the alphabet and identify the numeric placement for each letter in the alphabet, then add those numbers together to see what you get. I’ll make it easy for you: A = 1; T = 20; T = 20; I = 9; T = 20; U = 21; D = 4; E =5. Total = 100!

Everyone has a “bad” day now and then at work. With all the pressures of the economy, family, health and other things that can surface in your life, it is no wonder that you would sometimes rather stay in bed and pull the covers over your head rather than go to work. Unfortunately, most people are not independently wealthy or in a position to do that.

Once you get to work, it is important that you try to put personal or other issues that might be negatively impacting you aside and give 100% effort to your job, employer and customers. After all, those are the elements that allow you to get paid and have opportunities in life.

The bottom line is that your customers deserve nothing less than a 100% positive attitude from you and others in your organization. By creating a customer-centric environment in which you and your peers focus on identifying and satisfying customer needs, wants and expectations, the chance of everyone succeeding increases. Additionally, providing the best customer service possible can lead to increased brand loyalty from your customers.

Learn About Robert C. Lucas – author of the Importance of a Positive Attitude in a Service Culture blog article

Make Money Writing Books: Proven Profit Making Strategies for Authors by Robert W. Lucas at Amazon.com.

In my book Customer Service Skills for Success, I define customer service as “the ability of knowledgeable, capable, and enthusiastic employees to deliver products and services to their internal and external customers in a manner that satisfies identified and unidentified needs and ultimately results in positive word-of-mouth publicity and return business.”