Building loyalty goes beyond good customer satisfaction scores

ABA Bank Marketing, May, 2007 by Bruce Clapp

Many of us have implemented an on-boarding program to address the immediate risk of attrition and to positively impact the strength of our initial customer relationships. Great news. But this is only a start toward building the relationship we need to attract, maintain and grow successful loyal households. Below are four lessons about deepening the customer relationship.

Lesson No. 1: Realize that on-boarding is just the beginning of a more comprehensive process of building loyalty. In a recent US Today article, Wells Fargo & Co. was profiled for its ability to sell an average of 5.2 products per household, with over 20 percent having eight or more products per household. The secret? Hard work, focused training and a CEO that drives the process and inspects every day the positive progress toward the goal. The organization focused less on product delivery and silos of business units and more on what the individual customer needed. Results reporting were changed, incentive programs revamped, employee reviews were changed. Simple, but very complex.

Lesson No. 2: Building loyalty is an organizational effort across all customer contact points and business units.

Carlson Marketing Group recently released a white paper on "The Untapped Opportunity in Financial Services." The report focused on a measurement that defines the "strength of relationship" and its impact on referrals, willingness to buy, and overall loyalty (as defined by maintaining and growing their relationship). They report four key behavioral characteristics related to creating and refining relationship strength: (1) Switching costs. (2) Service experience. (3) Free benefits. (4) Physical convenience.

These four areas impact the ability to retain a customer and, more importantly, successfully grow and expand the relationship. According to Carlson, having a high level of relationship strength increases the likelihood of a customer remaining a customer one year from now by 42 percent and produced a 57 percent lift in the purchase propensity.

Lesson No. 3: Relationship strength is more important than satisfaction as a true indicator of loyalty. Customizing the experience of our customers, in-branch and in-home, impacts the strength of relationship as it builds. In the experience, ensuring our message is relevant requires that we be closer to our customer. The communication we use, whether direct mail, e-mail or in person, must be tailored to the needs of the customer on an individual level. The term mass-customization has gained ground as we look for ways to become partners with our customers and "be there" when they have a financial need. Carlson reported that changing the customer perception of communication that was "somewhat irrelevant" to "relevant" increased relationship strength by 39 percent. Having or not having an MCIF or CRM or simply being relegated to a core system is not an impediment to our ability to customize ... it just creates increased amounts of effort for the end result--effort worth the energy invested.

Lesson No. 4: Our communication outlines our customer process, reinforces our desire for the customer relationship, and guides the development of the relationship strength.

Building loyalty is a process that involves the entire bank, starts at the board level and is a change in how we view our own customers. We should not be lulled to sleep by high "satisfaction" measurements as loyalty is the ultimate driver of retention and ability to grow our customers' relationship.

Bruce Clapp is President of MarketMatch, a marketing communications firm in Clayton, Ohio, that works exclusively with community banks. E-Mail: hclapp@marketmatch.com.