Competitions look like easy marketing wins until you see how many fail to attract or retain anyone worth keeping. The difference between the winners and the wasted spend isn't creative — it's planning. Here are the four things successful competitions do that the dismal ones skip.
Using a customer's name during a transaction sounds like a corporate-training cliché. The data says it's worth nine percentage points of customer satisfaction. Here's the research, and why such a small personal touch outperforms most expensive service investments.
"We scored 76 — is that good?" "We improved 10 points — why?" If your survey results are generating those reactions, you're probably missing one of the three critical elements every customer loyalty survey needs. Here's what they are, why most surveys miss at least one, and how to include all three without making the survey longer.
Customers control the relationship now, which means every piece of communication has to earn its place — relevant to them, profitable to you. Most marketing comms fail one or both tests. Here are the four bridges you need to cross to fix that, starting with knowing what each customer is actually worth.
Wall Street pressure pushes companies to cut customer service costs to hit the next quarter — even though the University of Michigan's hedge portfolio based on the American Customer Satisfaction Index shows customer satisfaction beats the market. Here's the case study, the research, and what it implies for treating customer service as an investment instead of a cost line.
Australia's Federal Government clipped the baby bonus by less than 10%, and the backlash was loud. The same dynamic shows up in customer-delight programs: once customers expect it, taking it back hurts more than never offering it in the first place. Here's why customer delight can be counter-productive, and what to do instead.