Forum Moderators: buckworks
http://www.bzzagent.com/downloads/BeeLog/HBR_OneNumberYouNeed.pdf
It turned out that a single survey question can, in fact, serve as a useful predictor of growth. But that question isn't about customer satisfaction or even loyalty- at least in so many words. Rather, it's about customers' willingness to recommend a product or service to someone else.
Makes sense. If your services are good enough that they will tell a friend, you must be doing a good job.
I have a list of emails for all of my customers, and could easily send a survey to some subset of them to see how my company might rate.
During checkout, I ask whether customers would like to be added to our newsletter/emails list. Should I mail surveys just to those people, or would emailing people who didn't sign up for the newsletter be acceptable as well?
Repeat customers? No thanks.
Repeat customers? No thanks
But that's just it. The article says you don't want to necessarily focus on repeat customers, just ones who would recommend you to their friends. Do you think the people who are doing a chargeback would recommend you to their friends? Probably not, so those are not the kinds of customers you want, even if they buy from you a hundred times.
The article goes on to say that you may not even want to focus on a customer who continually buys from you. The example they give is a woman who buys a Nissan as a first car and loves it. As she moves up the salary ladder, her next car will probably not be a Nissan, but when that woman's nephew goes to buy his first car, she enthusiastically recommends that he buys a Nissan, which results in a sale.
I know it's a long article but read the whole article. It is fascinating and near the end they get into how this therory works online with several companies. Using the friend metric, Amazon and eBay are through the roof, while AOL is slowly drowning. And it's obvious when looking at their growth, but you can use this metric to predict growth and better understand customer satisfaction.
Explain the above. What percent of your first-timers do chargeback?
By chargebacks, do you mean refunds where the product is returned or people who stiff you on credit card chargebacks without your approval?
I can't imagine anyone not wanting repeat customers
The cheeky monkeys will order one item then email and say thanks id like another then do a charge back on both items.
Most popular excuse - first wasnt as described the second item never showed up.......
Ive even had a wholsale order stiff me ($560) - doesnt deny the items showed up but claim that they werent as described. Its a mass produced game, how can that be so? NO one has ever emailed me asking for a refund upon return of the board games.
Its a real headache - doesnt happen with clocks or watches just board games.
I'm puzzled by what you are saying. If you are selling standard board games (like Scrabble or Monopoly) there's little possibility the product can be misrepresented.
We do our own credit card processing. Don't use Paypal.
Otherwise our most loyal customers are from smaller countries.
I think what I'm asking is this. What are the tools to build customer loyalty? We use companies every day and most of them fill our requirements perfectly. But what takes it the extra step to actually get loyal customers?
My GUESS is that our most loyal customers are nearby. I've noticed that we don't seem to get many repeat orders from Alaska and Hawaii.
We are located in the central U.S.
But what takes it the extra step to actually get loyal customers?
I think it is just that. The extra step. Why would you recommend a company? My mother-in-law recommended a store to me last week b/c the sales clerk took down her number and called her when a jacket she wanted went on sale. I recommend resturants when the food is resonablly price but above and beyond in taste. Your company needs to do one thing that makes it stand above the crowd in order to be a company that people would recommend.
* Easy shopping experience. Can customers find what they need quickly and is it obvious how to purchase?
* Easy to calculate shipping charges. Can customers figure out quickly what shipping is going to cost them?
* Interesting product mix. Is your store a "me too" or do you offer your customers something that they might have trouble finding elsewhere?
* Responsiveness. When your customers write or call you with questions, do you do a good job with your answers? Are your responses well-written or well-spoken? Do your emails carry a friendly tone? Do you respond quickly? Do you ever let your less-than-perfect mood slip into your communications?
* Initiative. Do you review your customers' orders for mistakes or oddities? If someone orders something in non-standard options, do you catch it? Do you contact them to make sure they ordered what they think they did?
* Trust. Is it obvious that you trust your customers? If a customer ordered the wrong item, and needed to exchange right away, would you send it immediately without charge? Or would you wait for the return or force them to pay again?
* Key influencers. Do you keep track of where your customers are coming from and who they might be? Though you always give good service, do you give EXTRA good service to those that either have recommended you in the past or are in a position to recommend you in the future?
* Quality. Do you ever shirk on quality, even a little bit, when pressed for time? When customers receive your products, are they delighted or disappointed?
* Ease of return and exchange. Do you make it simple and straightforward for customers to return or exchange items? Or, do you make them jump through hoops hoping to exhaust or dissuade them from sending items back to you?
* Shipping times. Do you set your customers expectations as to when they will receive their items? Do you then do everything in your power to exceed those expecations? If you say that it will take up to 10 business days from the time the order is placed, do you bust butt to get it shipped in five?
* Follow up. Do you follow up with your customers to make sure that they are satisfied? If you know a customer needed an item from you for a specific reason, do you email or call them to find out if they got it, if it worked out, and if there was anything else you could have done?
Last week, I built a survey mirroring what the HBR reprint outlined and sent it to a reasonable sample of my customer base. As of the time I wrote this posting, my net promotor score was roughly 75%.
One of the most interesting things about the survey was the section where customers could write a sentence or two with miscellaneous comments. I learned things from that that I didn't know before. Enough that I decided to integrate customer satisfaction surveying into my normal processes.
I wrote a series of scripts designed that automatically notify me when its time to send a survey request email to my new customers and then tracks and tabulates all the results for me.
Its great stuff and if you aren't surveying your customers, you should be.
--Mike
Once, I ordered some ink and they included a little package of M&Ms in the box. This silly extra put a huge smile on my face. Another time when ordering cosmetics, the product was wrapped in a really cool bag. Noting my own reaction to these little surprises, I started including a treat with orders.
I've actually recieved thank you notes for my freebies! It costs so little but is SO effective in helping customers love your company.
