Customer Loyalty

Now, more than ever, it’s important to drive deeper ongoing relationships with customers. As retention is more valuable than acquisition, keeping customers happy makes excellent business sense. The crux of the matter, however, is that maintaining this level of engagement is not always easy. Forum Members were asked to share their views on loyalty and provide tips on how to not only keep customers coming back, but to turn them into advocates.
To view all the Member comments, please download the PDF version.
UNDERSTAND THE CUSTOMER
ESTHER DIJKSTRA, Head of Protection, Scottish Widows
Understanding how to best help our customers is key to building loyalty and long term relationships. At Scottish Widows, we recognise the importance of customer loyalty, with a philosophy of ‘keeping customers protected’. Our experienced retention and sales teams work proactively to identify customers at risk of lapsing and work with them and their advisers to understand any issues, offering options
that allow them to keep protection in place. Our data helps us understand customer behaviours around lapses – in 2012 ‘cost’ was the main reason, with two thirds of customers citing a need to reduce outgoings. More recently, this has shifted to ‘cover no longer required’, suggesting customers’ income is not so stretched but showing there is a very real need for advice.
ON A PROMISE
MARK EVANS, Marketing Director, Direct Line Group
UK general insurance is one of the most competitive markets in the world, where the vast majority of customers shop around annually – with many motivated solely by price. Yet, at Direct Line, we have very high levels of retention compared with other less competitive sectors. When customers buy insurance they are buying a promise that, in their darkest hour, we will address their problems. In recognition of this, we have launched a number of new services – whether dispatching lost or stolen household items within eight hours, or completing car repairs within seven days. We also have a pipeline of proof points to continually demonstrate that we have our customers’ best interests at heart for as long as they choose to stay with us.
DATA IS THE KEY
PAUL LEADBITTER, Marketing Consultant, Paul Leadbitter Consulting
Customer loyalty ultimately depends on personalisation: of product, delivery channels and, most importantly, service. Key to personalisation is customer data: an asset to which the financial services sector has good access. “Just satisfying customers won’t keep them loyal – they have to be totally, completely satisfied,” wrote Jones & Sasser in their seminal Why Satisfied Customers Defect back in 1995.
Today, companies aim to delight customers, making them consciously, actively happy rather than just passively satisfied. But what makes Customer A “consciously happy” might only be “satisfactory” to Customer B, and not impress Customer C in the slightest. Achieving customer loyalty lies in the creative and skilful use of customer data, combined with new applications such as Real-Time Customer Intelligence that can enhance personalisation in a way that was previously unimaginable.
Please continue reading all the Member comments via the full article by downloading the PDF version.