A recent Advertising Age headline summarized the new mantra of marketers: "It's all about relationships." The focus in our new millennium is clearly on customer retention and the need to create an enduring brand relationship -- a bond between company and customer.
Who's talking about building relationships? Everyone. Marketers of everything from toothpaste to airlines, and from automobiles and khakis to hospitals and soft drinks. Mass merchandisers as well as web site marketers.
How are they building relationships? Through frequent buyer reward programs, of course, but also through enhanced customer contact. More communication. Targeted messages. Targeted promotions. One-to-one marketing.
Is increased contact truly the key to an enduring customer relationship -- or is it simply adding to the clutter of communications that floods the mailbox, the telephone and the inbox of today's consumers?
The mere fact of customer contact does not guarantee that a positive result will ensue. It is the content, the timing and even the style of communications -- not simply the existence of it -- that will determine whether brand loyalty is ultimately enhanced or reduced. Not all phone calls, ads and e-mail messages are created equal.
If a marketer seeks to enhance the customer relationship, it stands to reason that the contact must be of the sort that is relationship building. Not all of it is.
Creating loyalty through customer contact
Not all types of contact perform equally well as tools for relationship building. As The Gallup Organization found in a recent survey of several thousand customers for a variety of products and services, personal contact with company employees -- whether in person or over the phone -- typically has a demonstrably greater impact on customer loyalty than does the company's advertising.
Regardless of how creative or intrusive or enjoyable the advertising might be, it often pales in comparison to contact with "customer facing employees" when it comes to creating loyalty. Why is that? Advertising most often merely registers the brand promise. It is the employees who keep -- or fail to keep -- that promise.
In any number of product categories, we've found that employee contact is a major driver of intended loyalty. Importantly, however, it is not only the job skills and competencies of employees that matter to customers. In any number of cases, we found that the impact of the non-trainable "people" talents may outweigh the trainable "knowledge and expertise" skills. For example, the apparent friendliness of the fast food counter service personnel is a more powerful predictor of customers' stated loyalty than is their seeming competencies in getting the order correct or knowing the menu items. Interestingly, the exact same relationships were found to hold true for automobile dealer service representatives, for airlines and for banks.
Why? Is competency of performance irrelevant? Hardly. However, job-relevant competencies may be taken from granted by customers -- and, more importantly, aren't felt to differ greatly between any number of fast food chains, airlines, banks or car dealers. Thus, in many cases competencies take on real meaning only when severe problems or errors arise. Competencies thus serve as "dissatisfiers." Landing at the wrong airport. Failure to credit a deposit or to replace the drain plug after an oil change. These are important events, but they are relatively rare. Business processes, policies and training help to make that so.
When employee skills and knowledge are seemingly similar across brands (or stores or dealerships), it is the more variable "people" talents -- the apparent customer-focus, warmth, approachability and perceived helpfulness of those who interact with (i.e., contact) the customer -- that serve to determine the strength of the customer-company relationship.
Building the brand bond
The role of the human dimension of customer contact becomes clear when we examine what it is that creates a true and lasting bond with the customer.
Real relationships are never driven solely by the rational attributes of the product or service provided. Relationships reflect an all-important emotional connection as well. Feelings. Affective responses and reactions.
How does this relate to customer loyalty? How can this emotional bond be reinforced? Isn't this the job of advertising? What role do employees have in creating an emotional link to the customer -- and how can this employee-customer relationship be managed?
As indicated earlier, it's not simply the brand's advertising that establishes an affective bond between the customer and the company. The ads may present an emotional promise that the company makes: "Friendly skies," "We build excitement," "Like a good neighbor," "We love to see you smile." However, in many cases it is the human face of the brand -- powerfully represented by the customer-facing sales and service representatives -- that delivers on this ad-depicted emotional promise and that either cements the bond or weakens it.
An emotional connection between company and customer has several components. Together, these determine the nature and strength of the "attachment" felt by the customer -- the bond between the customer and the brand.
What are these components? Typically they are of three general types.
First, customers must feel, trust and believe that the brand keeps its promises. They must feel comfortable, knowing the brand promise and trusting in the company's commitment to deliver on it. Company communications, whether delivered through a web site, a brochure or a 30-second TV commercial, cannot establish trust if it is not fully supported by subsequent product -- and people -- encounters.
Second, customers must feel that they are treated fairly and that they receive the level and type of treatment that they have reason to believe they've earned. Customers must feel that their needs, issues and concerns are truly important to the company. Company policies, procedures and customer reward and recognition programs can certainly provide one important aspect of this fair treatment component. Yet, typically, it's not simply the reward, but how it's delivered. Thus, there is also a key role for the employee -- at the dealership, in the store, on the airplane, through the Internet, or at the call center. The employees are tasked with delivering on this "fair treatment" promise and thereby strengthening this dimension of the emotional brand connection.
Third, customers must feel a sense of pride in being (and being known as) a customer of the company, and a user of the brand. They must feel that the company actually cares about them, and that they are not merely a faceless and meaningless number to the company. Advertising may create this expectation but, once again, it is the people who are called upon to reinforce this emotional attachment component and, as always, to deliver.
The enduring brand relationship: company, employee and customer
The power of the customer-facing employees does not derive simply from their knowledge of products, policies and procedures, nor from the relevant skills they've acquired through training and hands-on experience. These are vitally important. They are not, however, sufficient. The power to build enduring relationships also derives directly from the people talents that employees bring with them to the job, and from the ways in which those talents are managed and leveraged so as to maximize the emotional connection and enhanced brand loyalty that can -- but may not -- result from employee contact.
Customer loyalty is the Grail for this new millennium. It links impressively to a wide variety of financial performance outcomes. Importantly, then, how can customer loyalty and brand attachment be increased? Interestingly, it all begins with employee attachment, which can be readily measured (through application of Gallup's Q12) and, hence, can be managed.
As noted earlier, Gallup has found in any number of studies that employees have a key role -- sometimes the key role -- in cementing customer commitment. Furthermore, there is a direct and apparently critical relationship between employee engagement and customer engagement.
The stronger the bond between the employee and the brand, the stronger (and, thus, more profitable) will be the bond between the customer and the brand. As Frank Sinatra sang it, "you can't have one without the other."