Connect and Collect: Two Rules to Win Customer Loyalty.

Tuesday 2/2/10 time 10:51 AM - Sjoerd @Moogo

It is not uncommon for a business to spend a lot of money and energy towards attracting new customers. If your company is one of them, consider the following two quotes:

- "Businesses spend five times as much for new customers than they do on their present customers, yet a regular customer is worth 10 times the cost of acquiring a new customer." (The Loyalty Coach)

- "Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000." (Pete Blackshaw)

Even if these numbers are only partly true (after all, I have found them on the net), they both convey a very convincing message: it is important to keep your current customers. Although there are a million different ways to do this (Allan Katz, the man behind the Loyalty Coach, shares fives secrets with you, and he does not ask one in return!),  the most important thing is to connect with your customers.

With connect, I do not necessarily mean to jump on the social media bandwagon. It is more  effective to start with the basics. Paul Spiegelman at Entrepreneur mentions four rules to remember, but I think they could even be boiled down to two rules, which are easy to implement and highly effective.

1. Listen and Respond
Communication is the key to a successful relationship. Really listen to what your customer has to say, and respond as good as you can. Customers are more forgiving of errors, as long as you are honest about it, and communicate clearly what went wrong and how you will prevent these errors from happening in the future. For example, a late delivery might not necessarily become a problem, as long as you inform the customer on time.

2. Be Proactive.
You should not only listen and respond, but you should start the conversation. Make your customers talk to you. You will learn a tremendous amount about your customers need, that no marketing company could ever tell you. If you have a website at Moogo, chances are that we have send you a personal e-mail, to inform how Moogo is working out for you. We engage in active communication with customers, to make sure that they will get everything they need out of our product. We give them tips on how to improve their websites, and how to get the most out of the features they have paid for.

To provide our users with the best results out of their website, we have tried to translate the above knowledge into our product. For example, if you order the Moogo Business package, you will get Advanced Forms, which allows you to run surveys with your website visitors. Darren Rowse at Problogger.net can explain you why he thinks running surveys with your readers rocks. Business users will also get the mailinglist option, which is perfect to contact a large amount of customers at the same time.

Feel free to comment on this blogpost! We will "listen and respond!"