LA ELUSIVA LEALTAD DEL
CLIENTE   
That
Elusive Customer Loyalty: How to Build It, Learn From It and Profit From
It
In an article on
Oct. 9, 2000, in the Financial Times’ Mastering Management series, Wharton
marketing professor
Barbara
Kahn writes
about the importance of turning customers into advocates who will not
only develop loyalty to your company’s product or service but will also
spread the word to other potential buyers. Below is the text of her article.
Banks have traditionally
treated retail customers identically: "Deposit your money and you
get a check book." Yet when banks began to collect data that allowed
them to compute profitability for each customer, there were marked differences.
Some kept a lot of money in their checking accounts and rarely accessed
it, or if they did, withdrew the cash through ATMs. These customers were
very profitable. Others kept low balances and made frequent withdrawals,
often through contact with tellers. Such customers ended up costing the
bank more, and were not profitable. Identifying profitability helped banks
devise strategies to suit different types of customers.
Customer
Portfolio Management
The analysis banks
used to track profitability was customer portfolio management. It is a
technique that has proved useful for many businesses, those dealing with
both consumer and business markets. To determine which customers were
most valuable, banks had to allocate revenues and costs at the customer
level. Although revenues had traditionally been allocated at the customer
level (banks always knew who had the most money in their accounts), it
was not typical to treat costs in this way. In banks, as in most companies,
costs were handled at the product or operations level.
By allocating costs
to each customer, banks were able to find out which customers were most
profitable. It then became easier to devote resources and time to the
most profitable customers. While revenues were known to follow an 80/20
law, so that 80% of revenues were generated by 20% of customers, costs
can follow a 90/10 law, so 90% of costs are generated by 10% of "whiny"
customers. If you reduce the costs of serving customers whose business
does not warrant additional attention, and spend more time serving customers
whose business does, the overall customer portfolio can become more profitable.
The trick is to figure
out how to allocate costs to each customer. Costs can vary by units (such
as inventory, physical handling, cost of goods sold). They can vary at
the transaction level (order processing, shipping, order frequency costs);
or at the relationship level (maintaining an account, contact time, service
costs). There are also selling and maintenance costs (promotional mailings,
free samples) and enterprise level costs (warehousing). These costs need
to be assigned as appropriate to each customer. When costs are broken
down and compared with revenues from each customer, profitability can
be computed.
This profitability
determines the asset value of the customer relationship, or the customer
equity. One way to think about customer equity is to create a grid with
revenues (high/low) on the vertical axis and customer costs (low/medium/high)
on the horizontal. Customers can be designated to one of the boxes on
the grid and profitability assessed.
When customers are
designated in a portfolio system, management goals become clear. With
unprofitable customers, managers need to do three things. First, reduce
the costs of dealing with them, for example by encouraging electronic
banking. Second, increase the revenues generated, perhaps through fees
for services or price increases. Finally, consider ending the relationship,
although this is frequently an undesirable or unethical solution.
The problem with profitable
customers is retaining them, because they will attract the attention of
your competitors. Building customer relationships may be the answer to
both types of problem.
Relationship
Marketing
Relationship marketing
is grounded in the idea of establishing a learning relationship with customers.
At the lower end, building a relationship can create cross-selling opportunities
that may make the overall relationship profitable. For example, some retail
banks have tried selling credit cards to less profitable customers. With
valuable customers, customer relationship management may make them more
loyal and willing to invest additional funds. In banking, these high-end
relationships are often managed through private bankers, whose goals are
not only to increase customer satisfaction and retention, but also to
cross-sell and bring in investment.
In determining which
customers are worth the cost of long-term relationships, it is useful
to consider their lifetime value. This depends on:
- Current
profitability computed at the customer level
- The
propensity of those customers to stay loyal
- Expected
revenues and costs of servicing such customers over the lifetime of
the relationship
Building relationships
makes most sense for customers whose lifetime value to the company is
the highest. Thus, building relationships should focus on customers who
are currently the most profitable, likely to be the most profitable in
the future, or likely to remain with the company for the foreseeable future
and have acceptable levels of profitability.
Relationship
Goals
The goal of relationship
management is to increase customer satisfaction and to minimize any problems.
By engaging in "smarter" relationships, a company can learn
customers’ preferences and develop trust. Every contact point with the
customer can be seen as an chance to record information and learn preferences.
Complaints and errors must be recorded, not just fixed and forgotten.
Contact with customers in every medium, whether over the internet, through
a call center, or through personal contact, is recorded and centralized.
Many companies are
beginning to achieve this goal by using customer relationship management
(CRM) software. Data, once collected and centralized, can be used to customize
service. In addition, the database can be analyzed to detect patterns
that can suggest better ways to serve customers in general. A key aspect
of this dialogue is to learn and record preferences. There are two ways
to determine customers’ preferences: transparently and collaboratively.
Discovering preferences
transparently means that the marketer learns the customers’ needs without
actually involving them. For example, the Ritz Carlton hotel makes a point
of observing the choices that guests make and recording them. If a guest
requests extra pillows, then extra pillows will be provided every time
that person visits. At upmarket retailers, personal shoppers will record
customers’ preferences in sizes, styles, brands, colors and price ranges
and notify them when new merchandise appears or help them choose accessories.
With increased use
of the internet, companies have more opportunities to learn customers’
preferences and behavior transparently. Information that can be easily
collected includes:
- Words
used in search engines to find your site. These can help understand
how to categorize your services
- Source
of visit (search engine, other sites, directory sites, portals, banner
advertising and so on)
- Individual
customer measures such as number of monthly visits; time spent per
visit and search patterns; orders from site; conversion (from visitor
to purchaser); spending per order; spending per visit.
When marketers learn
customers’ preferences collaboratively, they engage in dialogue to help
customers articulate their needs and identify how to meet those needs.
Ultimately, this method should result in an ideal product, but it can
take time. The goal of the marketer in learning preferences collaboratively
is to determine a way to maximize learning without frustrating customers.
Again, the web can be useful with online questionnaires and forms.
Permission marketing
can be used also. This involves asking customers for permission to gather
personalized information or to contact them in the future. Finally, collaborative
filtering is effective for learning customers’ preferences and helping
them choose items they may enjoy. The book retailer Amazon.com uses this
approach. The company tracks customers’ preferences and purchase patterns,
matches them with those of similar customers, and recommends other products
based on purchases by similar customers.
When customers collaborate
with marketers, the customers are also learning their own preferences.
Customers can thus have more control and ensure they get what they want.
A product designed with the customer is by definition not wrong, so having
a customer collaborate on discovering his or her own needs encourages
the customer to commit. Finally, just being part of the process seems
to increase satisfaction. Levi-Strauss found this to be the case with
customized jeans. Customers were more likely to be satisfied with the
final product if they actually tried on a pair of jeans (although this
wasn’t necessary in the process).
Learning
Helps Cross-selling
One advantage of learning
a customer’s preferences is that the company then has a record that can
be used to cross-sell other products or services. For example, if a customer
used personal finance software, such as Quicken, then a marketer could
(as a service) offer to provide credit card information in that format.
This information would be useful to the customer for financial planning
and would provide a rich information bank for the marketer.
As well as helping
the customer to control his or her finances, the marketer (with permission,
of course) could learn about the customer’s recent purchases. For example,
if a customer began buying children’s clothing, the marketer could propose
related goods; or if plane tickets were bought, hotels could be suggested.
Other customer histories
can help the marketer. For example, health organizations could keep a
record of incidents and patient lifestyles that might suggest diagnostic
testing and treatments. Insurance companies, such as USAA, which has traditionally
focused on military officers and their families, already do this. USAA
follows marriages, births and other life-changing patterns so it can advise
customers on changing needs. By responding to these patterns, USAA increases
revenues by selling more insurance and financial services. Furthermore,
it increases customer satisfaction and loyalty by monitoring and adapting
to their needs.
Marketers need to be
careful with this information and build a relationship based on trust.
Some businesses have natural advantages: People are more likely to trust
a doctor or a bank than a supermarket. However, if relationships can be
built and if the marketer provides valuable suggestions, the customer
is likely to be loyal. It is easier for a customer to stay with a trusted
company than to switch to another.
A
Virtuous Circle
By learning customer
preferences and focusing on long-term relationships, managers can provide
products and services that fit customers’ needs. They can also do this
in a way that ensures loyalty. If a company earns a customer’s trust and
if, as a result of that trust, customers share strategic information about
their preferences and needs, it will be difficult for competitors to duplicate
the relationship.
As relationships develop,
customers will tend to buy more from the company. Further, the more a
customer buys, the more likely he or she will be to buy from that company
again. This virtuous circle is reinforced because the more a customer
buys from the trusted company, the less likely he or she is to turn to
another supplier. Finally, the regular customer is more likely to switch
to a premium product or service.
The ultimate reward
in managing customized relationships will come if a company can transform
customers into advocates. A recent example has been seen among Palm Pilot
owners. The Palm Pilot, a pocket organizer, can be customized and so has
fanatical supporters. Owners are willing to submit their names and preferences,
to be on mailing lists, and are frequent visitors to the company’s web
pages. In addition, these loyal customers extol the virtues of the product
to potential buyers.
Although price strategies
may be effective in the short-term, they rarely come out best in the long
run. A better strategy to transform customers into advocates is to try
to meet the needs of each customer more precisely. Learning customers’
preferences can not only help meet their needs better than the competition,
but can also help marketers forge an enduring relationship.
El retorno de la inversión en entrenamiento y capacitación de equipos gerenciales es normalmente exponencial y en minutos. Vincent Peale.
          
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