It’s Nice to Be Liked
I don’t think anyone can deny the warmth we feel when someone shows they care, but how often do you get to beam when a customer likes your brand? I’m not talking about Facebook ‘Like,” I mean real customer devotion.
Depending where you work, this could be an everyday thing, or it could be a once-in-a-blue-moon-the-sky-must-be-falling kind of occurrence.
You see, most revenue-focused executives worry about sales first. Then they turn their concerns to customer loyalty, retention, and repeat business. Whether customers actually like doing business with them just isn’t top of mind. (If you’re an exception, kudos to you!)
This is Why I Love What I Do
A colleague asked about the focus of my work recently. “I help companies keep their brand promises,” I replied, explaining how a true commitment to customer experience wins the hearts and minds of customers and employees alike.
“So you create Devotional Brands!” he proclaimed, and I smiled. He was right.
Every day I get to help people think about what can happen when customers actually do like them, and even better, the possibilities that open up when customers are devoted to doing business with them.
[Tweet “Devotion can’t be bought. It must be earned through a sincere effort to do the right thing for someone else.”]
Devotion doesn’t come easy. It can’t be bought. You have to earn it through hard work and sincere effort, which is one reason more people don’t but a priority on it.
It’s More than The “Right Thing”
Lots of executives understand that customer focus is “the right thing to do” in order to secure the favor of buyers. Some of these same executives assume two things: First, that putting a priority on customer needs is expensive, and second, that customer experience is strictly touchy-feely intangible stuff.
They’re wrong. In fact, as companies strive to become market leaders many are discovering that distinguishing themselves through customer experience is highly profitable.
Keeping Brand Promises is Profitable
Aligning your organization to anticipate and address customer needs adds quantifiable value to the bottom line. How so?
- Enterprise-wide customer-focus gets everyone on the same page, reducing conflict and rework. The resulting improvements in speed and efficiency offer measurable cost savings.
- Satisfied customers become advocates and evangelists, working like an advance team to sell your products and services before your sales team even knows a buyer is looking.
- The accelerated revenue that results from shorter sales cycles improves cash flow and increases profits, allowing funds to be reinvested for greater return on capital.
- Positive brand awareness increases marketing effectiveness, attracting the right customers. This allows more efficient investments in demand generation and creates better ROI.
- Serving the right customers encourages your ideal prospects to provide high-value referrals, reducing customer acquisition costs while expanding customer lifetime value.
- A strong customer experience can reduce service requests and support calls, freeing customer-facing resources to provide rapid problem resolution for buyers that really need it.
- Employees prefer working for firms that treat customers well. A shared sense of purpose leads to greater job satisfaction, lower employee turnover, and stronger customer relationships.
With the right metrics, you can quantify each of these benefits for your business. The results may vary depending on your business model, company size, and industry, but they are real, as industry research has shown.
So now you can have the best of both worlds: data that shows your efforts are worthwhile, and the rush that comes from customers saying, “You’re awesome!”
Knowing this, shouldn’t your organization work on becoming a Devotional Brand?