Cast your mind back to Christmas Day (or your most recent cultural day when the focus is on family).

Imagine you are a hardworking single mum in her early 50s who has devoted her life to her now-grown children. Two years ago, you were able to purchase a two bedroom unit in a leafy suburb – your first home. As interest rates have risen, you’ve taken on extra work to cover the increased payments and you are doing ok.

You’re enjoying Christmas day, relaxing after the preparations as everyone is finally seated at the table, laughing and reflecting on the year past.

And your phone buzzes with an incoming email message.

It’s Christmas Day. It’s just after 1 pm. It must be a friend or extended family member right? You glance at it to see how you’d like to respond.

Instead of smiling and reading best wishes from a friend, your stomach sinks. It’s from your bank. On Christmas Day. At 1.12 pm. About an interest rate increase.

Eroding your good work

Business, rightly, has embraced automation for everything from reassurance that orders are successful to suggesting other items suited to the customers’ buying patterns. Customer expectations around being understood and receiving personalised communicationns, recommendations and follow up.

Yet, in one moment, the good work we’ve done is destroyed when an automated message is sent, without a final overlay of common sense and/or sensitivity to cultural diversity.

So why didn’t that happen? Maybe it was difficult or expensive.

It’s worth the effort. How much do you allocate to customer service and market? And how do you value customer loyalty? It takes time to build and not time at all to lose.

Who will win in 2024? Businesses that invest in understanding their customers on a more common sense, personal level. 

How?

• Let”s say you work for a large retailer selling own-brand clothing – research customers to determine what keeps the top 10 % coming back. Set a goal to make bring the next 10% to the same level.
• You work for a premium chocolate manufacturer seeking to break into a new market or customer segment – identify your best customers and interview 4-5 a month to find out what is important to them. Why are they buying your product over others? How are interest rates affecting them? What would delight them so much they would tell their friends about your brand?
• Your company’s SaaS solution for online rostering gets rave reviews from existing clients who bring more business to you after trial. Re-orient your marketing messaging from the super clever technology in favour of showing prospects reviews, video testimonials and addressing their pain points.

Almost all businesses say they put the customer first – unfortunately when customers try to interact with them, online and offline, the real-life experience does not bear this out.

Ready to change up your loyalty strategy? Reach out on info@fireflyadvisory.au or if you like to book your own meetings – here’s my calendar.