I had a interesting dinner on Tuesday night this week with a group of executives from various Telecoms companies discussing the subject of customer loyalty. The discussion ranged from offshore contact centres through social media to large databases with customer information and “intelligence”.
When asked to sum up, I thought deeply about what really made me loyal to the brands that I hold dear. I have had good and bad experiences with both onshore and offshore centres. I have seen social media used well (and badly). I am using the emerging tools of webchat more and more to fix problems and find out information without talking to a call centre agent. In the past I have helped to build very large databases about customers. But none of these, for me, were the root-idea of what made me loyal.
It struck me that current trends on “fixing processes” and “KPI measurement” and “culture” also often completely miss the point by looking backwards – a bit like driving a car through the rear view mirror.
What made me loyal, I concluded was “An authentic response in the moment”. The idea went down well.
Very interested to know what other readers might think is the single thing that helps to make them loyal to a service provider…
