Customer Satisfaction; Building Customer Relationships and Loyalty

“The creation of value is not about increasing your customer’s satisfaction. It is about taking responsibility for your customer’s results.” – Thom Winninger

Customer satisfaction? Isn’t that what we all strive for, what we drive ourselves for each day? The business owner whose has the most satisfied customers wins, right?

For years, conventional wisdom has said that a satisfied customer is a loyal customer. The world is full of information and experts that instruct businesses on how to build customer loyalty. Concepts like “customer focus” and “customer satisfaction” are warmly embraced. Businesses have “products” and “services” to sell and we sell these things to customers. Who wouldn’t want to focus on satisfying customers? Who wouldn’t want to build a base of loyal customers who come to us for all their needs? Yet we still find that customer satisfaction is a fleeting thing, captured one day by the best price, the next day by how well a complaint may be handled.

However, satisfaction and focus simply aren’t enough. A leader in today’s market must learn new words like intimacy, interaction, loyalty, and perhaps most important, strategic alliance. Strategic alliance is a single-thread relationship. It is being one with our customer. This type of relationship is very interactive with the customer. Strategic alliance is not just a fancy re-wording of conventional terms. It is not a make over of the same old tired concepts of “sales and service.” A strategic alliance with a client is built on a mutually agreed-to plan that reflects the nature and needs of the parties involved. It will involve a true paradigm shift away from satisfaction and toward loyalty.

PROCESS NOT PRODUCT
The industry leaders of today focus on the program, process or system that surrounds their product or service – not the product or service itself. An industry leader sells a program that helps customers make money or makes their life easier or more enjoyable. Rather than just selling a product or service, they wrap the process around it, thereby anchoring the value to the product and inevitably, achieve full price!

Almost every product sold, whether it is hard goods like cars, boats houses or soft goods like movies, or vacation packages, is intimately tied to several aspects of a process, including production, conversion, technology, logistics and distribution. By the same token, every customer goes through a buying process. The more a business owner learns about that buying process, the more we can help our customer by customizing programs and systems to assist the customers themselves become part of the buying process. The more we can truly help our customers, not just satisfy them, the stronger our relationship with them becomes. Satisfaction has been confused with acceptance of substandard levels of service and product performance. Customers are not really satisfied; they have just learned to deal with it. They have learned to accept the standard opening question of “Can I help you?” They have learned to accept, “Sorry, that’s not my area,” or “We can’t do that.” A business owner who develops a strategic alliance with customers will help them become a part of finding their own definition of satisfaction and the relationship will be greatly strengthened. The end result is a product or service that becomes so critical to customers that they are willing to base all their future purchases on it. The pressure is off price and focus is on the process.

A key to building this invaluable dynamic with our customers is centered on the selling of the program, process or system by which our product is most intricately linked. Take a look at the success of thematic dining. The Rainforest Café or the Hardrock Café offers food that is not particularly any better than other dining establishments yet they offer entertainment wrapped around the product and the service. Rather than a family going out to eat, they attend an “event” and enter into an “environment.” Bu focusing on the program surrounding the food, rather than the food itself, these eateries are able to create more value and therefore can charge much higher prices for the same food.

FOCUS ON WHAT IT DOES – NOT WHAT IT IS
Business leaders can successfully sell the program in three ways. The first method is to focus on what the product or service we offer does, not merely what it is. Concentrate on the benefits of the product instead of simply the product itself. A customer may come in to a dealership looking for an All Terrain Vehicle. Of course he knows what an ATV is, but does he really know or understand what that piece of equipment can do? Does he know it may decrease field time while delivering safe and stabile assistance with difficult chores? Does our personal watercraft client understand that the jet ski she is considering can not only provide hours of fun and enjoyment but also serve as an economical and efficient means of transport? These days it is not at all uncommon to see a large cabin cruiser parked in a quiet bay on a large body of water, with the family jet ski tied along side, ready to make the quick trip to the marina for more supplies? The idea of selling the benefits instead of the product is proactive in nature. It allows us to draw the client in, finding out what his or her need is, and then applying the features and benefits of the product to it. The concept is to tie the product to the lifestyle needs of the user. The client then reveals to us “why” he or she needs our product or service and we can then build the process around the need.

Thomas J. Winninger, CSP, CPAE, and member of the Speaker Hall of Fame is the president of Winninger Institute for Brand Strategy. Over 70 major companies in North America depend on him to assist them in maintaining their market dominance. The new millennium has seen the release of his newest book “Full Price!”. He is also the best selling author of “Price Wars” and “Sell Easy”. Contact the Winninger Institute at (612) 896-1900. E-mail: thomas@winninger.com; or visit our website.