Keep in touch with your customers expectations to retain their loyalty.

The best companies with the finest products can lose touch with their loyal customers. Disenchantment, or being lured in by a competitors extra discount or better product or service can push people away. What do you do when this happens? Do you go out and look for more customers, launch new products, talk to your current customers or blame it on the weather?

Keeping in touch with your customers to retain their loyalty

Implementing an effective market research strategy is the answer, but the secret to that is by doing it methodically. The right questions must be asked, engaging in the correct target market, and using methods economically and efficiently to get the best results.

There are a number of scenarios that organisations can face, for example:

• Finding new markets/clients
• Reviving lapsed customers
• Getting to know what customers think
• Checking quality of service

Giving satisfaction is an art but measuring it is a science. Customer satisfaction surveys measure the quality of service but also the customer experience. Getting both aspects right is key to gaining customer loyalty and recommendations.

Once this is implemented the following aspects can be assessed:

• Identify customer engagement with your brand & also stakeholders.
• Evaluate the importance of your portfolio to different customer groups.
• Measure the effectiveness of the service that you deliver.
• Measure the quality of service delivered and areas for dissatisfaction.
• Identify the added value your service brings.
• Areas for improvement.
• Report on findings and recommend areas for  action.

All that is left to do once this is completed is to translate the results making recommendations for training and systems improvement.