Companies today talk of how customer advocacy is key to the
growth of their brand. Loyalty programs are expected to retain customers and
push them to advocate their brand to new or undecided customers. Stopping at this can be enough for most brands
but not pushing for something beyond that can be a missed opportunity. Your
most loyal customers, quite possibly know your brand and services much better
than most employees in your organization. Using this priceless knowledge and mining
it to its best can become a game changer for you. The idea that immediately
emanates from this is to bring your customer in as an advisor. Use her to help
you know your brand from her perspective and give you ideas as to how processes
can be improved and customer service in turn, made more efficient.
Restaurants have been known to ask customers for opinions on
new dishes being introduced. The risk of asking certain loyal customers for
their opinions can lead to skewed feedback which cannot always be translated
back into the business. But when a restaurant takes that risk of introducing
that dish on its menu with the feedback from its closest customers, it’s not
only a tremendous show of faith, it also is a statement of how valuable loyal
customers are to them. Companies may not find such a program easy to execute
primarily because executing all that these customers ask for, may not be
tenable. But even telling them why it’s not possible is a grand gesture in
taking the relationship further.
So ask yourselves if you can execute such a program. Ask
yourselves what will stand in the way and if the problems seem difficult, think
of the value of a small army of your most loyal customers backing your every
move. That should be enough reason to get you started.