DENVER – Interesting, yet scary, U.S. statistics point to an increasing intolerance among cable, high speed Internet and telephony customers who feel they’ve been wronged by their provider.
Robert Wollan, Managing Director of CRM North America Accenture showed data during a Sunday afternoon CTAM session which showed that customers are switching providers in record numbers as their services become more and more competitive. The latest stats show a whopping 2/3rds had switched a provider in the past year, a 47% rise from five years ago.
Consumer expectations have escalated and are trending upward at record speeds, said Wollan. When asked, What do you do when you get a bad experience, these latest stats show customers leaving with less predictability than in the past.
The difference from 2007-’09 decreased from 49% asking to speak to a supervisor before choosing to leave, is now down to 36%. The amount that just quit doing business was 11% in 2007 and increased to 23% this year. The importance of being tapped into your customers, solving their problems quickly and being able to directly market to them is critical. One size does not fit all and marketing messages and loyalty or public relations efforts need to be targeted to your different customer groups.
Add all that to the facts we now have more generations in the workplace and a very different retirement demo than in the last century and knowing your customer is a far more sophisticated task than it’s ever been.
Barbara Olsen, VP Personalized & Loyalty Marketing for Best Buy outlined how the electronics retailer changed its customer touch points a few years ago and the end-to-end experience which has helped them do well even in this bad economy. Best Buy strongly encourages their employees (known as blue shirts) to provide ideas to meet their customers’ unique needs. They utilize monthly motivational and educational videos for all their retail staff who are effectively taught how to identify each type of customer group they serve and provide the necessary service to meet their expectations.
This is quite interesting and so critical, as many of their staff are very young, and by putting not only a face, but personality, a picture of their lifestyle, what is important to them, and approximately what they spend at Best Buy annually, is working very well. The blue shirts are engaged and confident because they get their customers and know what they expect.
Customers want you to show that you know them, prove it, and show they are valued, said Olsen.
Best Buy’s loyalty program is growing rapidly and it is clear their best customers drive their bottom line. They offer Best Buy incentives, invites to exclusive sales events, first crack at popular new products that are in limited quantities and special clubs targeted to different interests i.e.: Gamers Club with 2 million members who get early access to hot games. The stores also often tie in with local sponsors and treat their top customers to local events, as a thank you.
Best Buy continues their efforts to pull more to their web site and provide new and dynamic content to keep them coming back. They recently launched Twelpforce, where 500 blue shirts help with customer service issues on Twitter, once again engaging their staff. They launched on Facebook and obtained 160,000 members in only two weeks and virally grew to a million shortly thereafter.
We all want to feel like an important customer, don’t we? When we do, we usually reward the company and tell others.
Janice Lee, President, JLL & Associates, is reporting from the CTAM Summit in Denver for Cartt.ca.
