Customers For Keeps

Today's retail marketplace is a vast sea of products, services, and wannabe brands. But even the catchiest slogans and biggest selections won't capture the buyer's loyalty if they don't establish a personal "connection." And there's no closer connection than friendship. Author and entrepreneur Lois K. Geller has found a surefire way to raise your brand above the others. Her philosophy - so simple and yet so powerful - is Friendship Branding. While working with clients such as American Express, Weight Watchers, and Columbia House, Geller found that creating a warm, long-term relationship with customers brought unprecedented sales and long-term brand loyalty. She also discovered that customers prefer the brand that reflects the qualities of a good friend: reliability, humor, honesty, charisma. Customers for Keeps reveals the eight stages of Friendship Branding that will put your company on your customers' "most wanted" list. 1. Wear a human face. 2. Maximize your initial impact. 3. Bond with customers by establishing mutual needs. 4. Listen to your customers via new channels. 5. Win trust by apprising customers of the latest brand developments - good and bad 6. Set your customers at ease. 7. Commit to customers. 8. Sustain your friendships. Customers for Keeps will show you how to: -Create and maintain a memorable, effective brand - no matter how large or small the company -Redefine a brand as an experience, rather than an image -Relate to customers as one would a best friend, using the principles and "rituals" of friendship -Inspire trust, respect, and loyalty in customers -Repair "broken" relationships sothat they are stronger than ever -And more! This groundbreaking work tears down the old definition of branding. Instead of simply creating a physical image or mental association of a product or service in the customer's mind, companies can now brand themselves in such a way so they are thought of as trusted friends. Remember, every customer worth getting is worth keeping. Customers for Keeps shows you why a friendship between customer and company is not only preferable in today's marketplace - it's vital.

This fresh take on retention and revenue is “a useful guide to long-term customer loyalty that’s engaging, insightful and actionable . . . a fast, easy read” (Jonathan Tower, Managing Partner, Catapult VC). It costs 5 to 25 times more for companies to acquire a new customer versus retaining an existing one. That means a company’s process to keep its customers is tied directly to its revenue and profitability. In Keep Your Customers, Ali Cudby provides insights from business leaders, beginning with legendary executive Kay Koplovitz. The book goes on to offer real-world consumer behavior stories, business best practices, and CEO-led case studies in industries ranging from technology (ClusterTruck, PERQ), consumer packaged goods (Soapbox), and retail (Esprit de la Femme, Urban Stems). Interviews with renowned venture capitalists Mark Suster and Kara Nortman of Upfront Ventures, Square Capital executive Jackie Reses, and indie musician Craig Wedren, former Shudder to Think frontman and Yellowjackets composer, are also featured. Keep Your Customers is based on a proven process that has helped companies around the world improve the lifetime value of their clients. Keep Your Customers shares a fresh perspective on the old problem of customer relations. It jumps straight into practical strategies and actionable tactics to bring loyalty marketing to life for large and small businesses alike. Ali Cudby shares how to set up customer engagement for loyalty with a company culture to support it; grow without being stuck in the endless grind of new customer acquisition; and build the most powerful asset for any enterprise—a loyal, long-term, and lucrative customer base.

Current customers are overwhelmingly a company's greatest potential source of sales and profits. For many businesses, 80% of sales come from 20% of their existing clientele. Yet companies spend about five times more money on campaigns to attract new customers than in developing and executing strategies to retain current customers. Marketing for Keeps: Buying Your Business by Retaining Your Customers provides a blueprint and proven strategy for developing and mining a company's most valuable resource: its current customers. Based on original research at 35 North American customer retention champions, both large and small, including America West Airlines, Au Bon Pain, BellSouth Mobility, Burnaby Hospital, Fidelity Investments, Northwestern Mutual Life, USAA and Xerox; organized around a 12-step management planning model for customer retention; shows how to use customer research to uncover real customer needs provides tools to help identify your best customers Shows how to improve customer contact, tighten your grip on current customers through multiple relationships and recover lost customers; and shows how to empower employees and develop teamwork around a customer retention plan. Marketing for Keeps is a book for managers and executives in all companies: from entrepreneurial start-ups to the Fortune 500. In a back-to-basics age. it shows how to take action and make money on the most basic element of any business: your current customers.

A nationally syndicated columnist and sales trainer shows how to convert "satisfied" customers into "loyal" customers. Includes real-world techniques, helpful checklists, inspiring stories, and thought-provoking self-tests.

Includes a detachable folded poster of "The Hatrix."

Good, bad, or indifferent, every customer has an experience with your company and the products or services you provide. But few businesses really manage that customer experience, so they lose the chance to transform customers into lifetime customers. In this book, Lou Carbone shows exactly how to engineer world-class customer experiences, one clue at a time. Carbone draws on the latest neuroscientific research to show how customers transform physical and emotional sensations into powerful perceptions of your business... perceptions that crystallize into attitudes that dictate everything from satisfaction to loyalty. And he explains how to assess and audit existing customer experiences, design and implement new ones... and "steward" them over time, to ensure that they remain outstanding, no matter how your customers change.

As many businesses are discovering, customer behavior doesn’t always make sense. That really shouldn’t be surprising. As recent studies have shown, people tend to base their decisions on more subconscious, emotional desires than on rational, practical choices. What’s more, customers aren’t able to tell you accurately why they do what they do. Combining recent research findings with real-world examples from his consulting practice on customer experience, William J. Cusick examines how the sub­con­scious part of the brain drives the decisions and behavior of every customer on a daily basis and introduces the concept of "the irrational customer." All Customers Are Irrational shows why businesses must change their approach to attracting and retaining customers, and proposes ways they can alter their strategies on everything from customer research, product design and website development to call center management, employee recruitment, and retail store layouts, by focusing on what customers are actually doing instead of what they’re saying. Honest, direct and insightful, All Customers Are Irrational will help businesses tap into the impulses and motivations that both attract and retain consumers for the long haul.