Building customer loyalty will only strike a cord if customer loyalty is important to you as a business owner. And as we all know – in today's cut throat world – every customer counts.
We installed a cctv surveillance system in several fast food outlets for one of our customers. He wanted to keep an eye on his staff and also watch how his customers were being treated while he was away from the store.
This business owner had recently noticed that turnover was taking a downward turn in one of these outlets. Feedback from the location manager and staff was that there was less traffic and so fewer sales. "Fair enough" he thought. And so plans were made to increase advertising spend in that area.
We met with this business owner on this location to go over some CCTV footage to look for consumer buying and traffic patterns and noticed the store was closing at about 7.30 pm instead of the usual 9pm. Further investigation showed that the turnover downturn was directly related to the early closing of the outlet. After some staff modification and new performance indicators were implemented I thought about how this had affected customer loyalty. (The business owner now uses his CCTV remote viewing capability to check on all his outlet opening and closing times.)
I don't know about you but when I get home and put the slippers on - a trip to a fast food outlet is really not my idea of fun. So I try to have the stuff delivered. In the case of the "early closer" the staff had taken the phone off the hook so that a continual engaged tone was all I would get. This would lead to a grumpy trip to the shopping center only to find nobody home.
Now I'm faced with two alternatives. Buy from someone else or go home empty handed. What does this have to do with customer loyalty? Customer loyalty is directly related to the last experience the customer has with the respective supplier. If it's positive he will likely come back because a feeling of trust in service and product has been reinforced.
However – if the experience has been unfavorable then the customer will question himself about repeating the experience. No-one wants to deal with a supplier who provides unreliable service or product. So the next time I'm given the job of getting fast food I'll look over my options – and the "early closer" is not going to be at the top of my list.
Another supplier will have taken over my expectation of reliability and so becomes my first choice. Now I know that you probably don't have a fast food outlet but you do have staff and offer a service or product for sale.
Is your customer having a positive experience every time he elects you as supplier of choice? A CCTV system can help you audit that customer interface and either reinforce your peace of mind that all is well – or – point out that some attention is needed to some aspect of the business.
