Why punish, when you can reward? Online or off-line, there are simple steps you can take to make your customers feel valued

I make of frequent occurrence shopping-cart sorties at Amazon.com. on the other hand despite the convenience of one-click shopping, it's not the solitary bookstore I visit. I'm an equally loyal customer at my neighborhood Borders volumes and Music for a different locate of reasons. If you place on your marketing hat for a next to the first you'll see why this postures a problem--or an opportunity. The "bricks" and the "clicks" aren't either/or scenarios today. As of that kind marketers cannot assume that customers fall into these either/or buckets

Technology is single way to connect the dots when cultivating customer loyalty. Reaching on the outside to consumers and keeping them loyal to your brand many times involves rewarding their online behavior with benefits that make them perceive pampered offline, and vice versa. When an airline allows a passenger to print his or her boarding pass, it's rewarding the online action (of e-ticketing) with the off-line benefit of avoiding drawn out check-in lines at the airport.

To realize back to the two bookstores, the retailer and the e-tailer have unique ways to gain and retain loyalty. For example, Borders tosss its Rewards program customers regular e-newsletter with a 30 percent not upon coupon that's only valid in stores. Amazon has verily amazing customer service. The web site has a click-to-call button that immediately brings upon an Amazon customer service somebody If you don't believe me pass to the help link and make experiment of it. You will be asked to provide your phone number, which instantly triggers a phone call. Just refrain from selecting any of the three options you'll hear, and a real individual will be on the phone in next to the firsts It's a neat combination for an e-tailer: to listen to your customer and not just be happy with click-through rates.

on the other hand when overused, technology can make go round a standard customer experience into something other entirely. Marketing is so driven through competition that the need to reward customers is repeatedly overshadowed by the need to trap and punish them. We have all tend hitherward across companies with an interactive voice replication system that punishes you for hitting "0" in search of an operator through ending your call. You may be able to reach a live one but you have to move through a complex menu to find that person

Honey not vinegar

I one time worked for someone who used to remind his customer service representatives that you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Is the universal of rewarding customers so hard to grasp? Consider in what manner some companies have turned consumer into raving fans. In his volume Who Stole My Customer?? (Prentice Hall, 2004) author Harvey Thompson asks, "Why do you want satisfied customers? To create happy faces? No. You want satisfied customers in the reliance they will return." Customer loyalty is more mixed than customer satisfaction.

The candy maker Hershey's rewards customers through allowing them to collect points, with a twist. The WrapperCash points are printed upon the inside of the chocolate bars and can be used to bid upon products--from mountain bikes to cars--on a Hershey's auction site. on the other hand the site is run by dint of eBay, nicely marrying the off-line and online experiences. Then there's Upromise, a loyalty-marketing program in the U that allows customers to squirrel away cash payments toward a community savings plan. It's used through brands such as Coca-Cola and Tide to reward customers almost upon a daily basis. To date, millions of parents have joined.

At the upscale extreme point of the spectrum is Virgin Atlantic Airways, which has quite a reputation for pampering its passengers. Virgin's Flying Paws is a rewards program for passengers' pets--and obviously their owners! Business-class passengers also have access to an "in-flight beauty therapist" and a masseur, which clearly stations Virgin's reward program apart from those of many other airlines.

What if you don't have the pack or the infrastructure for a rewards program? in what manner about clearing up those customer service minefields? Many companies unwittingly punish customers through having untrained people pick up the phone Do visitors to your web site leap over through hoops to get to the information they are looking for? oftentimes a simple search box will do the trick. Do you have a plan to make open up a new register when someone with 95 items in her shopping cart is holding up the line? Can your customers preorder a returns from your web site and pick it up at the store? domicile and building supplier Lowe's and Eckerd Pharmacy give leave to you do just that.

In their volume Raving Fans (William Morrow, 1993) view Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles say that rewarding customers is nothing revolutionary--just public sense. That common sense must take into account the hybrid online and off-line customers, who wait on to have very high expectations. In the extremity it's not the boarding pass, the work or the short checkout lines that they'll remember and talk about. It's the experience. by dint of seamlessly integrating your off-line and online offerings, you can make them have feeling truly rewarded.

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