On June 18th, 2009, the AMA hosted speaker Jill Griffin, author of Taming The Search-And-Switch Customer, at the Cool River Cafe in Austin. With her North Carolina accent in full effect, Jill shared “oodles” of knowledge and research aimed at helping companies with customer retention.
Jill Griffin is known all over the world as an expert in the three customer-keeping competencies: customer loyalty, winning customers back, and managing the search and switch customer. Customer retention has become a trending topic at a time when buyers are more price sensitive and budgets are being drastically cut. In addition to the current economic conditions, the popularity of Google and Social Media have muddied the waters even more. Customers seem only as loyal as the lowest price they find online. Fortunately, those of us in attendance last Thursday have the benefit of Jill’s strategy for defending our customers from online competition.
For those AMA’ers who couldn’t make it, and the millions of Austin AMA blog readers around the world, here’s what all businesses need know about keeping their customers:
1. Make defending your brand, and your customers, online a priority. This one seems obvious, but I’m sure Jill mentioned it for a reason. Defending your brand is kind of like exercising. It’s good for us, we need to do it, we might even enjoy it, but we always put it off until tomorrow. Actively making this part of our strategy is half the battle.
2. You need to ace the “Worth It” test. The longer we’ve been in business, the less we know about what’s going on in the mind of our customer. We may not know what the next best buying alternative is, or maybe our front liners don’t know what sets the brand apart. Jill’s “Worth It” test shows us exactly where we need improvement in the search and switch customer department.
The “Worth it” Test:
1. Versus your next best buying alternative, my brand provides real, substantive differences that you consider important.
2. My brand provides you tangible, convincing proof of these differences.
3. You can easily articulate my brand’s differences.
4. You are served by employees who exemplify my brand’s differences through word and deed.
5. Relative to the price difference, you perceive my brand as delivering substantially more value than your next best buying alternative.
3. You have to think beyond the tactics to win. It wouldn’t have been a gathering of professionals without the mention of social media. Jill pointed out something we might miss as our excitement for Twitter grows. If we don’t have a point of difference to communicate to our customers, it doesn’t matter how big our reach is, how many mentions we have, or if Oprah is following us.
I know I might have been too busy with my steak and asparagus to catch all the best points of Jill’s presentation, so please add anything I missed in the comments below. Also, any feedback or experiences implementing the “Worth It” test would be immensely helpful to everyone.